Attendees at this year’s Cayman Islands Healthcare Conference, taking place from 20th to 22nd November at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman, will not only enjoy excellent presentations from some of the world’s top healthcare professionals, they will also enjoy interactive workshops and a showcase of some of the island’s most important not-for-profit organisations dedicated to improving healthcare in Cayman.

Now in its fifth year, the 2014 Healthcare Conference theme is: ‘Winning the war against chronic non-communicable diseases’ with a strong focus on diabetes, obesity, cancer, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and mental health. With those topics in mind, organisers are excited to present four workshops to run concurrently, taking place on the afternoon of Friday 21st November. There will be two workshops focused specifically on adults and how they can develop a strategy to bridge the gap in winning the war against chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs), and two on children and how to develop an early start to winning the war against CNCDs.

Organisers have surveyed stakeholders in the community, such as service clubs, educators, not-for-profits and NGOs to get feedback about what programmes are in place in relation to CNCDs, where there are opportunities or gaps and whether the community is aware of such support. A summary of these findings will form the baseline of the topics to be discussed during the workshop sessions. Each group will also feature a panel of medical experts, not-for-profit representatives as well as adult patients and parents.

These workshops will offer the community an important platform where both delegates and stakeholders can successfully exchange ideas and apprise themselves of the latest efforts in battling CNCDs.

In addition, another new feature of the conference is the local not-for-profit showcase area, called the CNCD room. “This special showcase will give these organisations the opportunity to educate and share information about their initiatives as each not-for-profit programme plays an important part for the local community,” Hon. Osbourne Bodden, Minister of Health, Youth, Sports and Culture said.

Representatives from Cayman HospiceCare, Special Needs Foundation of Cayman, Caring For Life Foundation, Employee Assistance Programme, Rotary Sunrise, Rotary Central, Cayman Islands Cancer Society and YMCA will all be located in the CNCD Room and organisers urge everyone attending the Healthcare Conference to make a point of visiting each booth to find out more about these extremely worthy organisations.

IMAGE: blogs.brandeis.edu