Later this year a compulsory national vote on a question about a proposed change to the Australian Constitution, a referendum, will be held to decide upon the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. Importantly these new changes will formally recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia.

A new Chapter (IX) and Section (129) will be inserted into the constitution as follows

Chapter IX- Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

Section 29 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander VoiceIn recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

(i) there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

(ii) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament  and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

(iii) the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

DevelopingEM supports the position statement of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine on the Voice to Parliament.

The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) supports a Voice to Parliament and Declaration of recognition in the Australian Constitution for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to help drive urgently needed changes and provide a clear and practical way forward for self-determination, as an essential step in the nation’s reconciliation journey.

DevelopingEM supports the Explanation of the referendum and the Voice to Parliament detailed by Reconciliation Australia.     

A Voice to Parliament will give Indigenous communities a route to help inform policy and legal decisions that impact their lives. Giving people a say will lead to more effective results.

This video from the Reconciliation Australia website provides an excellent summary of the value of the constitutional changes proposed and also addresses some of the common concerns with change.

DevelopingEM supports the Voice to Parliament

Thanks for your time and keep an eye on our social media for more resources related to the referendum.

Yours Sincerely,

Mark Newcombe and Sanj Fernando.Co-Directors of DevelopingEM Ltd.

Dear Colleagues, DevelopingEM Delegates and Faculty

Well, another DevelopingEM event has come and gone and we would just like to thank you for your enthusiastic support in making DEM2022 Darwin a conference to remember. We hope you agree that it was an amazing event and we hope the relationships made during the conference will continue to grow and develop in the years to come.

Our conference model does not work without your registrations as these, as you know, are our main funding source.

This model means you are all an integral part of the DevelopingEM team and responsible for the process.

We, as the management team, will be forever grateful for your support.

Despite the new challenges of the pandemic world and uncertainty about whether conferences of this nature would work, attendance was beyond our expectations.

• 234 delegates attended in person with a further 61 online.
• 26 of the 80 Faculty were of First Nations heritage with representation from Australian First Nations, Aotearoa and New Mexico.
• 16 regional delegates from Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Nauru, Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu were supported to attend in person. This covered registration, flights and accommodation. This group was funded by The Pacific Community, The ACEM Foundation, Tac Med, ELS, EMRAP GO, St Vincent’s Pacific Development Fund, and also personal donations from Mark Herewini and Rob Mitchell.
• 30 delegates from across the Pacific, Asia and Africa were supported to attend virtually and were funded by DevelopingEM.
• 90% of income came from you, DevelopingEMers, with the remainder of funds coming from the above sponsors and a Northern Territory Government Business Events sponsorship grant for which we are most grateful.

The breakdown of the distribution of the delegate registration fees is as follows.For a full delegate paying $AUD1800:

• $AUD 990 went towards venue and support service costs
• $AUD 450 went to administrative costs including outsourced event management, insurance, legal requirements, and merchandise (there is no payment to the medical management team)
• $AUD 126 went towards planning meetings
• $AUD 90 went towards marketing
• $AUD 36 went towards IT support

Normally 15-20% of our funding is directed towards host delegate and faculty support. This year this support was moved towards assisting our First Nations faculty with flight and accommodation support. In fact, the vast majority of this group generously self-funded or used existing institutional support and so only 6% of the total budget was required to support this endeavour. This equates to only $AUD108 from each full delegate.

Many ongoing relationships were forged during the conference and we hope this results in multiple future projects being generated as a result of the conference.

In summary, you have all achieved a great deal both in an immediate and long-term sense and the feedback from faculty and delegates has been overwhelming.

A comment from Paul Saunders, who led our second First Nations Healthcare afternoon, is very heart-warming and reflects many of the comments received from our amazing First Nations faculty.

“It was a fantastic conference, the best one I have been to, and I have been to plenty over the years. The real highlight for me was the inclusivity the coordinating team allowed in terms of First Nations faculty”.

We have reasons as a group to feel just a little proud of our collective achievements and once again we would like to thank you for your support.There are a few other things we need to mention before we let you get back to your busy lives.

Conference presentations
There were many requests for copies of the conference presentations. We hope to have all the presentations and videos uploaded to our website soon.

Staying in touch with other delegates
Without pre-approval, we can’t release our delegate details but if you are happy for us to make your contact details available for other delegates please let us know and we will create a 2022 detail database.Probably the easiest way to stay in touch would be through our Facebook and Twitter Pages. Feel free to join us here, upload your photos from the conference and post your thoughts. The instant messenger services on Facebook and Whatsapp are great ways to communicate as well.

Giving thanks
We would first like to thank our hosts and cultural ambassadors for the event Aleeta and Richie Fejo for helping us direct the event and for warmly welcoming us all to Larrakia country. We will remain forever grateful for the stewardship provided by Aleeta and Richie.

Our amazing unpaid faculty never ceases to amaze us with their generosity and expertise. With our old hands merging with new players, the workshops and plenary sessions were outstanding and we need to thank the following;

• Naren Gunja and the Tox Team from TAPNA.
• Terren Trott, Nadi Pandithage, Angelo Abeywickreme and the entire Core Ultrasound team.
• Kate Curtis and the HIRAID Nursing team.
• Aruna Shivam, Brian Wright and Ben Wyler for coordinating Adult EM, Peter Cameron, Jamie Moran and Dave McCreary for hosting Trauma, and April Kam and Sarah Watson for bringing us Paediatrics.
• The afternoon First Nations Healthcare tracks brought us some of the best thematic discussions we have ever seen at DevelopingEM and the track leaders, Aleeta Fejo, Jacqui Hughes, Sarah Goddard, Paul Saunders, Sharon Bloxsome, Paul McLeod and Ryan Dashwood were extraordinarily generous in leading these sessions.
• We would also like to thank Lee Wharerau for coordinating the team from Aotearoa, and Chelsea White for coming all the way from the Navajo Nation.
• Our faculty support teams also were enormously helpful in planning and developing the entire program and this includes Andrew Bezzina, Amanda Wallis, Nathan Trist, Megan Cox, Michelle Withers, Nat Thurtle and Taryn Clark.

Thank you all and we hope to work again with you very soon.

Events like this take time and persistence to plan and prepare and without the help of our incredible Alfred Health staff including Ann-Maree Guirguis, Sarah Jones, Arjun Bhogal and James Cameron, these events just would not happen. Thank you for your hard work over the last year and especially during the conference.

Preparations for our next event are steadily coming into focus and Sanj and I hope to bring you an ever-improving format so that hopefully we can again get together with our DevelopingEM family.

Thank you from both of us for all your support over the years and we will have more information on our future plans soon.

Mark & Sanj

DevelopingEM is pleased to partner with the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

The Indigenous Literacy Foundation is a national charity working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remote Communities across Australia.

They are Community-led, responding to requests from remote Communities for culturally relevant books, including early learning board books, resources, and programs to support Communities to create and publish their stories in languages of their choice.

We are hoping, with your help, to raise $2500 to support the Indigenous Literacy Foundation to provide books and learning resources to Indigenous children living in remote communities across Australia.

Show your support by clicking on the QR code, making a donation and sharing the page with your friends, family, colleagues and the DevelopingEM community!

Voices of the Future is a 3 minute video highlighting how your donation impacts the lives of children in remote Indigenous communities.

Look out for further ILF resources at our conference, DevelopingEM 2022 in Darwin from September 26^th to 30^th.

Have a listen to ‘Words Make The World Go Around’, by Josh Pyke & Justine Clarke written especially for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

Single available from: https://abcmusic.lnk.to/WordsMake

Proceeds support the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

DevelopingEM conference a great way to connect with like-minded clinicians from around the globe.

We have some great social events this year but even on our other days and nights people will be getting together.

The best way to stay connected is by joining our Whatsapp group.

Once again Joachim Unger from Berlin is taking care of your social arrangements.

Joachim is our most loyal international delegate and he’s been to every one of our international events.

He even collects the wrist bands.

He’s also a consultant anaesthetist who works in emergency medicine, intensive care and anaesthesiology.

As if thats not enough he is also the medical director of the Berlin Fire Brigade and the director of Global EMS.

Coming from Berlin he also is an expert on having fun- you are in good hands.

Come to #DevEM2022 for great clinical pearls and thematic discussion on the challenges and opportunities in the delivery of healthcare for First Nations peoples but also make sure you enjoy yourself!

Connect today.

In between conferences DevelopingEM continues to support international colleagues.

And by DevelopingEM we mean you, our family, our delegates, because it is your registration charges that go towards everything that your organisation does.

After #DevEM2020 we were able to facilitate the purchase and delivery of an iSimulate device to Laura Galvis in Cali, Colombia.

As many of you will remember Laura is a PEM specialist and gave a great presentation in Colombia on The How To’s of Using Low Fidelity In Situ Simulation in Paediatric EM.

It took a while to get the device to Cali because of the pandemic but it’s now in regular use.

We thank iSimulate and our colleague Camilo Gutierrez for facilitating your donation to Laura.

Since our 2016 conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, DevelopingEM has maintained a relationship with the Emergency Medicine community in Sri Lanka and played a role in the development of Emergency medicine and pre-Hospital services in the island nation. 

In 2021 DevelopingEM saved a bunch of medical equipment from being buried in an Australian landfill. With your support Sanj Fernando, our co-director, was able to recondition and transport a total of 12 ventilators and a heap of other medical equipment to Colombo.

This equipment is being distributed to large and small EDs around the country.

Some of the ventilators have in car chargers and are planned to be used to set up a critical care retrieval service between major population centers. This will hopefully facilitate the safe transfer of critically ill patients and aid in managing the demand in health services across the country.

At a tough time for Sri Lanka these devices have been gratefully received by your colleagues.

We thank you for your support as we continue to help colleagues in a small way around the globe.

Thank you DevelopingEMers!!