VIEW 2010

The Victorian Integrated Eye-health Workshop (VIEW) 2010 took place at the Royal Society of Victoria, Melbourne, on 20 April 2010. The workshop brought together key Victorian stakeholders with diverse representation across eye health and vision care, health, sport, education, government and health promotion to discuss innovative methods to prevent avoidable blindness and vision loss for all Victorians.

About the workshop

The workshop was facilitated by Jane Fenton AM of Fenton Communications who is also the Chair of VicHealth. Professor John Catford, Chair of the Vision Initiative and a panel of experts from related fields also attended including:

• Professor Peter Brooks, Director, Australian Health Workforce Institute
• Vicky Mason, Assistant Director, Health Development Unit, Department of Health
• Craig Sinclair, Director, Cancer Prevention Unit, Cancer Council Victoria.

The workshop was opened by the Hon Janice Munt MP, Victorian Parliamentary Secretary for Health, and Jennifer Gersbeck, CEO, Vision 2020 Australia, provided an overview of the Vision Initiative program. David Davis MP, Shadow Health Minister, also attended the workshop to show Opposition support for this important eye health and vision care promotion program.

Attendees were divided into three groups to explore ways to tackle how to:

• enhance health service and other sector policies for better eye health
• secure behaviour change among the general public for better eye health
• improve capacity and competence among health professionals.

Participants enjoyed the opportunity to network at morning tea and lunch which followed the conclusion of the workshop.

Outcomes from the workshop

The expertise and valuable contributions from the participants have produced excellent outcomes, with a book of proceedings sent to all attendees for review. All feedback received has been incorporated to produce the final outcomes booklet which can be downloaded below.