College of Health and Medicine

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Welcome to the first edition of the Faculty of Health eNewsletter and the very first blog post for the Faculty of Health.

A regular newsletter has been on the horizon for some time and we are pleased to introduce to you the very first edition of what we hope will become a monthly distribution of our eNewsletter, and a regular update to the Faculty blog.

Though we are writing this almost half way into the year, we would like to take the time to reflect on some of our achievements from the last 12 months.

Last year was a big year for the Faculty and the University, with 125^th university celebrations and the School of Medicine’s 50th^th anniversary.

Health Services Innovation Tasmania hosted the inaugural Sustainable Healthcare Transformation Conference early in the year.  We also saw some fantastic research outcomes including almost $2.2 million in NHMRC funding distributed across the Faculty late in the year followed by some exceptional results in the ERA rankings early this year.

This year looks to be just as big with many opportunities on the horizon and a lot of activity already taking place.

Semester 1 has seen significant growth in many of our courses including nursing, health informatics and medical research.

New developments are underway with staff working on new courses, partnerships and non-traditional units. Research staff have spent many weeks writing grant applications and we wish you all the best of luck and thank you for your long hours during this time.

In the year ahead we hope to spend some more time focussing on you, our people, our partners, our students and alumni and our community. We have some new initiatives such as the Gender Equity Committee, some key appointments across the Faculty and a newly titled Faculty Centre – the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre. This year also marks the ten year anniversary for our Darlinghurst campus, reminding us of the innovation and opportunities that our Faculty has both the experience and ability to achieve.

As this newsletter and blog evolve, we hope you will find it a useful communication tool in learning about what goes on across our large and diverse Faculty. This is your newsletter – if you have a story to share or would like to hear about a particular topic, please email your thoughts and feedback to: Health.Faculty@utas.edu.au

Best Wishes,

The Faculty Management Team

Denise, Rick, Justin, Greg P, Peter, Dom, Ben, James, Garry and Greg R