President ’ s Report
Christine Pope | ATMS President
The last three months have seen a significant uptick in activity , with our new CEO , Annie Gibbins , starting in mid-February and meeting all ATMS staff as well as key stakeholders in the industry , such as health funds , colleges and representatives of associations . It ’ s been a good way to reconnect with people in the industry and get updates on what is happening across the education sector and the natural medicine industry .
One of the major events that we attended was the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia National Summit in early April , 2024 . Their conference was held at the Sofitel , Darling Harbour , and as always was a key event for our advocacy , attended as usual by policy makers , as well as State and Federal Small Business Commissioners . This year we heard from both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader , as well as the Premier of NSW and a group of Independents .
ATMS in collaboration with Massage and Myotherapy Australia ( MMA ) organised seated massage for the conference attendees , which was warmly appreciated by those who had a treatment . Furthermore , the CEO of MMA also referenced the value of remedial massage for chronic pain sufferers in the VET and Skills Panels . ATMS was also successfully represented on the VET and Industry Skills panel by our new CEO , sharing her experience in setting up an RTO for optical dispensing . This event has given us a solid base for our ongoing advocacy for natural medicine .
Hopefully members are already seeing a change in the response times for calls and emails with the changes that have been made in processes . The team is also working on the data for the new website , which should have been launched by the time this edition of the journal is printed . The new version will be simpler to navigate and will also see improved functionality on key areas such as Find A Practitioner and the Member Portal . This will be the start of a series of upgrades for our IT platforms across the next two years .
Congratulations to all the practitioners who have been involved in Natural Medicine Week . This year we had over seventy-four online events and a significant number of blogs and recipes . It looks like we will be able to share over three months of member content on ATMS Social , in addition to the A-Z campaign that we ran through May . The promotion of the Top Ten Tips E-Book also enabled us to sign up record numbers to the marketing list for future events .
In 2024 we changed our processes to provide graphics in Canva , the online graphics design platform we now use to make it easier for members to share details of their events or provide marketing tiles to promote a local activity . Certainly , I needed some training on Canva but it proved to be a much easier format than PowerPoint , which we have used until now .
The other rewarding aspect of Natural Medicine Week is that the content generated provides ATMS with up to four months of online material across our social channels , allowing us to direct the public to blogs and recipes from our practitioners and ultimately to achieve our major goal , which is for people to book an appointment and see an accredited practitioner . It also provides an ongoing touch point for the members who contribute their time and energy in the form of blogs and recipes .
In a little bit of late breaking news , the latest update on NTREAP from the Health Department was shared in May and we are expecting the final report to the Minister to be submitted in September . Our efforts now will be redirected to getting the Minister to make the changes necessary for modalities to be reintroduced to health funds .
Hoping you all had the chance to celebrate Natural Medicine Week and looking forward to the next six months sharing new initiatives with you .
Christine Pope President
JATMS | Winter 2024 | 65