Donations with a difference

Donations with a difference

Looking for ways to spend your $3000 bonus from NSW Health? High Impact Medicine Australia has partnered with The Life You Can Save Australia to match all donations up to $50,000.

HIGH IMPACT MEDICINE Australia has developed a campaign to help medical professionals maximise their positive impact on the world.

The donation drive was sparked by the NSW Government’s $3000 ‘thank you’ payment to doctors, which organisers are hoping will provide additional motivation and opportunity for doctors to donate to charity.

“When the NSW Government announced the one-off $3000 bonus payment, we saw it as an unmissable opportunity to get people thinking about effective giving. And by teaming up with The Life You Can Save Australia, we’re excited that we can present people with a clear way to make that money even more meaningful,” explained Dr Bal Dhital, a PGY2 in Newcastle and founding member of High Impact Medicine Australia.

The organisation partnered with The Life You Can Save Australia, a nonprofit organisation that makes “smart giving simple” by backing charities that save or improve the most lives per dollar. The Life You Can Save was founded by Australian philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer to promote the concept of ‘effective giving’ and make it easier for donors to support cost-effective, high impact charities.

Charities associated with The Life You Can Save include Against Malaria Foundation, the Fred Hollows Foundation, Fistula Foundation, and the Malaria Consortium, to name a few.

“We chose The Life You Can Save specifically because of their Australian connection and because the 21 most impactful charities that they would routinely support are almost all global health related, which we believe would be of close interest to Australian doctors and healthcare workers,” said Dr Elina Christian, who is also a PGY2 doctor-in-training in Newcastle and founder of High Impact Medicine’s Australian chapter.

High Impact Medicine was established last year in the UK and is expanding around the world. Built on the ‘effective altruism’ movement, High Impact Medicine encourages medical professionals to look for opportunities to have a wide-reaching positive impact within medicine.

“We reckon that most people going into nursing, medicine, and allied health do so because they have a real motivation to do good in the world. This whole idea of effective giving is another way to do just that,” Dr Dhital said. “We recognise that donating isn’t something that everyone will be able to do. For those who would are able to and would like to spare some – or all – of their bonus, we think that this is a great way to double down on the good you’re doing. The unique value of effective giving is that you’re doing the most evidence-based good with every dollar you donate; you’re funding real, tangible, critical interventions for people suffering at the absolute extremes of poverty and disease. That’s meaningful for you, and life-changing for the people you support.”

The next stage of the campaign is to expand the donation drive to Victorian healthcare workers. Hi-Med introduces members to different cause areas, ideas, and roles and covers topics such as global health, health economics, health policy, biosecurity, mental health, and chronic pain, among others.

For more information about the Donation Drive, please visit: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/nsw-health-donation-drive/ You can find more information about High Impact Medicine here: https://www.highimpactmedicine. org/ and on Facebook.