Chatting with Alan 2 - Child health services in rural Australia

What a project.

Now, you know, for a lot of our viewers and listeners, you'll know that I'm obsessed by.

I've done a lot of work in my life on what I call third tier cities.

So these small cities of about 30,000 people, of which New South Wales has that wonderful fan going from Port Macquarie all the way down to Aubrey Wodonga.

So it's a phenomenal series of cities.

But as you've rightly said, we talk about the health injustices in third tier cities and the educational injustices as well, can I say.

But when one starts to move to the fourth tier of towns, fifth and sixth, then all sorts of issues manifest that one doesn't think about from a global or a second tier city.

And your research is revealing those challenges.

And so therefore that's sort of my second question.

We've talked about asthma already, but what particular healthcare issues are manifesting are appearing with that preventative health piece gone.

What are we seeing in rural, regional and remote children that perhaps we're not seeing in a global city like Sydney or second tier cities like Melbourne or Adelaide or Perth?

Well, I suppose the conditions are largely similar, but everything's just exacerbated or changed.

So I suppose in the context of what I'm looking for in this article, this protocol is the barriers to accessing healthcare.

So it's not just simply whether the service exists, it's whether a child can get to it at the right time, you know, is the service available and are they receiving the ongoing care? So one appointment's good, but healthcare is a long journey.

We need to keep marching forward.

Issues like workforce availability.

So some communities, they have limited access to GPs.

There's just no GPs in town.

But we also need to think pediatricians, child psychologists, our OTs, speech pathologists.

What about even just dentistry? Tell me about the value of a referral to a place that has no appointments.

Here is your golden ticket to nowhere.

Wow.

You get one appointment.

That's great.

But what about the subsequent appointments? Is that availability going to continue? What about the cost practical barriers? What the families are going to sort of endure? Fuel, accommodation, your time off work.