“Looking back....moving forward”, a call that themed cutting edge conference 2019. Four days of insightful knowledge and education shared by national and international scholars covering a variety of public health issues under the umbrellas of mental health and addiction. Motivation, aspirations, and hope for a better future prevailed the conference leaving more than three hundred professionals with a mission to improving mental health and addiction practices in New Zealand Aotearoa. Five of our kaimahi attended the conference that they described to be “an outstanding experience”. On Wednesday...

GHAW 2019 seems to be gearing up for a cracker of a week. I have noticed Facebook posts with Pause the Pokies campaign having lots of venues signing up to Pause their pokies over the week. What has surprised me though, is that this week a pokie venue in my local area paused their pokies for one hour during last week and will continue to do so again in GHAW week. Now that is impressive. The venue switched off for an hour as a test session and will switch off again during GHAW. In other Facebook posts I have seen some creative events: whanau movie nights, the Pasifika strong Mangere Family Fun...

I made the leap again and enrolled in the National Certificate in Public Health with Massey University. The back to study thing for me was ad hoc journey, to say the least. I had applied for the Ministry of Health scholarship to pay for my fees and unbeknown to me it was at a time when their website was down. Long story short, after filling in necessary paperwork I had to catch up on five weeks of study. Fortunately for me, I embraced and benefit strongly from the online learning environment. Why, because I could study anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Massey University utilises podcasts...