Natalie Anderson – Ambulatory Rehabilitation Barwon Health

Natalie Anderson-panelist photoNatalie has over 25 years’ experience in public healthcare and currently works as the Program Manager for Ambulatory Rehabilitation at Barwon Health. Natalie has a range of interests in health and is passionate about consumer driven care and the role of innovation and assistive technology to improve the lives of people living with disability. 

She believes that improving equity and access to ‘next practice’ healthcare, is achieved by building systems that use the principles of universal design – where the user’s experience is fundamental to design and the consumer view is central to decision making from the word go.

Having trained and worked as a Speech Pathologist for 15 years Natalie’s has remained particularly interested in building better systems around communication access for people with communication support needs either as a result of disability or reduced health literacy. Founder of the Barwon Health Communicative Access Advisory group, Natalie has developed and delivered communicative access training in a variety of settings over many years including most recently at Deakin University School of Medicine.

Natalie is currently responsible for a number of programs that have transitioned to NDIS and so brings some learnings with regards to the health-disability interface and the challenges therein.

Outside of the health world Natalie is a practicing artist with work in public and private collections. She is represented by a small number of regional galleries and lives to paint.