Community Involvement in WA COVID-19 Research

Consumer and Community Health Research Network (CCHRN) statement for meetings and work during COVID-19

As we’re all aware the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is circulating in the Australian population. We’re closely monitoring the situation and working on alternative ways that we can continue to involve you who are out in the community during the next couple of months.

In order to demonstrate our responsibility in minimising the spreading of COVID-19, CCHRN has taken proactive steps to move to remote working. In the interests of health and safety of CCHRN staff, consumers, community members and researchers for the foreseeable future we are also moving to online meetings, community involvement and engagement so that we can keep everyone safe. We appreciate some events like our Community Conversations are most successful and productive when people are in the same physical space. We’re working on what programs we could use to still involve you in this way, and how we’ll coordinate our online events and engagements – so watch this space for updates. If we cannot find another way to successfully host events online we will, unfortunately, need to postpone these activities until we can be assured we’re not placing people at risk.

In the interim, keep up to date with the National Health Plan (including a triage hotline) or the WA State Plan. Otherwise the most effective way to keep yourself safe is to not touch your face, and regularly wash your hands with soap and water for 20 to 30 seconds. We’ve found singing a song helps to time how long you’ve been washing. Here are some fun song suggestions.

Our top priority is to protect the health and well-being of our staff, the CCHRN community and our researchers. We want to help reduce the impact on health services, which are already under pressure. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and keep you informed of alternative arrangements for our events and ways to remain involved in research.

In these challenging times we’d like to thank the CCHRN Community and particularly the doctors, health care workers and researchers working tirelessly to keep Australian’s healthy.

If you have any questions please get in touch.