A workshop was recently delivered by delegates of the Australia-Indonesia Centre (AIC) Transform Health Leadership Program in Indonesia as a follow-up to the training program which was run in Melbourne earlier on in the year.
The leadership program was developed by the Centre for Adolescent Health’s Andrea Krelle, in collaboration with Universitas Indonesia’s Dr Bernie Medise and leads from the AIC’s Health Cluster. Nine Indonesian delegates participated in the intensive program, which included workshops and seminars on leadership, adolescence, youth engagement and various strategies to tackle non-communicable diseases. Participants proposed to undertake a successive workshop in Indonesia to draw on content from the leadership program.
The workshop was brought to fruition and was held in Jakarta over two days in April to further discuss the importance of adolescent health and evidence-based practice and advocacy in the prevention of non-communicable diseases. “We decided to make our circle bigger and stronger. We want to … share that knowledge, skill, and most importantly, our ‘adolescents’ spirit,” the delegates stated in the workshop booklet.
Day one focused on the need to address non-communicable diseases risk behaviours during adolescence, while day two explored the knowledge and skills required to bring relevant groups and sectors together in pursuit of improved health for Indonesian adolescents. Deviana Wijaya Dewi from the Australian Embassy in Jakarta said that she “[saw in Melbourne] how research has a strong role in Australian society” and stressed the need for Indonesia to “mainstream evidence-based practice and policies.”
The workshop advances the AIC Health Cluster researchers’ aim to expand the capacity and network of health professionals aware of the importance of adolescent health towards reducing Indonesia’s future burden of non-communicable diseases. “It’s an incredible output by our delegates,” said AIC Health Cluster Coordinator Christianne O’Donnell.
Andrea Krelle, who recently retired from her role as the Manager of Practice and Learning at the Centre, is a passionate advocate for workforce development and education for people who work with young people. She was instrumental in pulling together the Transform Leadership Program for the AIC. It is wonderful to see the impact the program had on the group who participated in Melbourne and that they were able to take the learnings back to Indonesia and run the follow up workshop in Jakarta.
Read more about the Transform Leadership Program here.