Nic Prince is leading a community needs assessment in Clunes, an initiative driven by Hepburn Health and in-line with work carried out by Red Cross in crisis centres. 

Mr Prince said small regional communities such as Clunes were similar to many third-world areas, because of their often limited assess to health services. 

This, he says, is why it was increasingly important for residents in those towns to take charge of their health and work towards prevention, rather than treatment. 

"I worked in several crisis centres in Jordan this year, helping to shift the focus away from visible medical facilities and start looking at educating the community instead," Mr Prince said. 

"We are now adapting those practices to a local context because we know that many health services in regional towns are not sustainable and cannot provide all the needs for locals." 

He said since the Clunes Hospital shut down and the 24-hour nurse on call service was removed, many residents felt they had lost their safety barrier. 

But that sense of prevention could become skewed, he said.

"Of course it's important to have access to emergency medical services but we see so many lifestyle behaviours place a huge burden on the health services," he said. 

"It's just not sustainable."

He said the assessment was not designed to replace services - but rather get detailed information regarding the needs of the local community. 

"We want to look at predicted health issues and work towards solving those by educating those in the community," he said. 

The consultation will cover a wide range of perspectives, including community groups, health services providers, education and welfare services and residents. 

If successful, the assessment will be rolled out across the region. 

"We know that regional towns have a higher rate of lifestyle-related health problems so we are looking to educate people about behaviours they can adopt within their means to help solve this problem," Mr Prince said. 

"But none of that will work unless we truly involve the community with this assessment and ask them to take ownership of the future."

Hepburn Health chief executive Trish Collocott said the assessment would help gain an understanding of what services were needed. 

"We want people to take control of managing their health and ... this will help us find out how to create resilient and healthy towns," she said. 

For further information about the consultation process, contact  Mr Prince on 0429 315155, or on cluneschna@gmail.com

Mr Prince is independent of Hepburn Health.