The 2020 AABAT AGM will see two special business items added to the meeting agenda.
If you can’t attend the AGM, please submit your proxy vote using the form below.
- AABAT committee ask permission of the membership to formally register AABAT as a national organisation with ASIC.
- AABAT committee ask permission of the membership for AABAT and the recently formed research, policy and practice unit to register an appropriate trading name for the policy unit to operate under.
National registration
AABAT was originally incorporated in 2008 in Victoria. Since then the network of people involved has grown substantially. To increase our capacity to support networking, the development of bush adventure therapy and outdoor healthcare in this country, we are proposing to register AABAT as a national organisation. This request formalises something that AABAT have been enacting with in principle support for the past decade.
Outdoor health/ Outdoor healthcare trading name registration
As was the mandate given in 2018, with ToR ratified in 2019, AABAT’s policy unit have been working hard to establish a role and relationship for AABAT with government. Towards this aspiration, their work has primarily centred on forming a community of nature-based health providers under the umbrella term ”Outdoor Healthcare”. Over the last year, this work has centred on 4 key areas:
- Setting up an outdoor healthcare website,
- Hosting the inaugural “Nature & Health – Research, Practice & Policy” (Online) Symposium,
- Connecting with, and forming a roundtable of outdoor healthcare providers (which may form the basis of a future collation or national peak body), and
- Preparing to undertake projects and research (with the help of Masters students).
To locate BAT within federal and state-based health systems (alongside other evidence-informed nature-based health modalities), the policy unit is currently exploring the merits of registering the terms Outdoor Healthcare and Outdoor Health. Registering a name for this unit to operate under is seen as an important step in anchoring the relationship that is being established between stakeholders and the policy unit, and giving it a platform for high level advocacy on behalf of AABAT and outdoor health service providers. The policy unit will provide a report on their activities prior to the AGM, and invite questions and feedback of all kinds.