Healthy Tasmania

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Healthy Tasmania We fill the gaps! We create whatever is needed to build connections between people who need help and people who provide help. We run programs. We manage events.

We started Healthy Tasmania to help people live the best life they can. We want to help Tasmanians improve their health, strengthen their life skills, to live in communities that are thriving economically and socially and be as passionate about Tasmania as we are. Healthy Tasmania works with community partners to build capacity, improve equity and inclusion, and promote pride of place; our motivation is to make communities thrive. We design, build and deliver projects to improve the life skills of Tasmanians. We write policy. We organise people. We find money. We’ll do the work, we’ll manage the process, we’ll fix your headaches, we’ll make you look good and we’ll share positive stories broadly to get your brand the recognition it deserves. Get in touch to find out how we will make it happen.

Narrative debt is Penny's fancy name for a pretty common problem.It's when different versions of an organisation's story...
06/09/2026

Narrative debt is Penny's fancy name for a pretty common problem.

It's when different versions of an organisation's story build up over time - an old strategy here, a new funding bucket there, a new priority, a new leader and each comes with a new set of words meaning someone has to keep joining the dots.

Sound familiar?

Penny reckons it’s something she’s hearing about more and more from the leaders she works with. They’re spending a surprising amount of time re-explaining what the organisation does, why it matters and how all the pieces fit together.

It’s exhausting, it can be pretty devaluing, and it’s costly.

Just imagine if all the the time spent re-explaining and proving the value of the work was spent doing it!

That’s the problem Penny’s Shaping the Narrative work is designed to help clear up: getting back to a shared story people can understand, remember and use.

A lot of the time, clients will work with one of us.Lucy might be deep in strategy, governance, leadership or helping an...
30/08/2026

A lot of the time, clients will work with one of us.

Lucy might be deep in strategy, governance, leadership or helping an organisation work through a particularly knotty problem.

Penny might be helping an organisation make sense of complex work, get clear on the story it needs to tell, or work out how to bring people with them through change, ideas and decisions.

But behind the scenes, our combined sister-brain is at work.

A quick debrief. A “what do you reckon about this?” A second set of eyes. A completely different perspective. Occasionally a very long conversation about possible strategies, that also includes a discussion about what we're getting dad for Christmas and who can pick up who's kids on what days.

We each have our own work, our own clients and our own strengths, but one of the lovely things about working this way is that we still get to borrow each other’s brain when it helps.

There’s a fair bit of thinking, testing, challenging and sense-making that happens in the Healthy Tasmania engine room.

Judging by this photo, we obviously take this very seriously.

As we all work out where AI fits into our organisations and day-to-day work, there’s a lot of talk about how we can do t...
25/08/2026

As we all work out where AI fits into our organisations and day-to-day work, there’s a lot of talk about how we can do things faster, smarter and more efficiently.

Through this process it's very tempting to ask: How can we do this better?

Maybe before a better first questions is: Do we still need to be doing this at all?

This comes up a lot in the work we do at Healthy Tasmania.

Lucy often sees it in strategy, governance, leadership and all the stuff that keeps an organisation running behind the scenes.

Penny sees it in the stories organisations keep telling, the messages they keep recreating, old communication habits and the ways they’re trying to engage people.

Because there’s not much point finding a clever new way to speed up something that probably shouldn’t still be taking up our time.

AI might help us do plenty of things faster, even better. It might also be a very good catalyst to ask whether we need to keep doing some of them at all.

Sometimes the best improvement is a better system and sometimes it’s giving yourself permission to stop doing the thing.

Back in 2022, Lynda McKay was standing on stage presenting us with an award. Four years later, she’s joined our team!We ...
17/08/2026

Back in 2022, Lynda McKay was standing on stage presenting us with an award. Four years later, she’s joined our team!

We do love a plot twist!

We’re so excited to have Lynda come on board as our new Business Manager. She brings a frankly ridiculous amount of experience, good sense and capability, along with the kind of warmth, empathy and values that matter a lot to us.

When you’re a little team doing lots of different things, having someone like that in your corner is pretty special.

This is something Lucy said at the start of winter - and now, somehow, there are only 21 days of winter left!The bulbs a...
10/08/2026

This is something Lucy said at the start of winter - and now, somehow, there are only 21 days of winter left!

The bulbs are poking their heads through, blossom is starting to appear, there’s a little more light at the end of the day.

It feels like a nice point to notice what might have been happening quietly over winter in our bodies and brains!

The ideas that were planted, the plans that needed a bit of time, the things that have been sitting under the surface, perhaps without us even realising they were growing.

As spring gets a little closer, what's starting to pop up?

To lean into the metaphor even more - is it a w**d that's starting to take over or something planted with intention that needs to be nurtured?

Maybe the next season is about giving them a bit of light, space and attention to see what they become.

Ten years ago, we stood next to a graffitied Popeye in Royal Park and took this very serious business photo.At the time,...
13/07/2026

Ten years ago, we stood next to a graffitied Popeye in Royal Park and took this very serious business photo.

At the time, we were just starting. No grand master plan. No perfect map. Probably not enough systems. Definitely plenty of spinach-required moments.

Looking back, it feels kind of perfect.

Popeye is a bit ridiculous, but he has a certain unreasonable optimism about him: the belief that a small burst of strength might be enough to take on something bigger than you.

Which, honestly, is not the worst metaphor for the first decade of building something you care about. (Minus the pipe and the old-cartoon baggage, obviously).

Ten years on, we are still here. A little stronger, a little wiser, and still working out what gives us strength when the heavy lifting starts.

We all know someone who works in the middle. The person who understands what is happening on the ground, but also knows ...
07/07/2026

We all know someone who works in the middle. The person who understands what is happening on the ground, but also knows how to get things moving through the system.

The person who hears what families are really dealing with, then somehow turns that into a referral, a report, a funding application, a partnership, a program or a bit of momentum. The person who can see the gap between what policy is trying to do and what people actually need.

The work by Kathryn B. Janda and Yael Parag gave language to something community services workers already know: the middle is not just “filler” between the top and the bottom.

Their Middle-Out Perspective was first developed in energy systems research, but it has since been applied to public health advocacy by Mindell and colleagues, who use it to understand how people and organisations positioned between government and individuals help create change from the middle out.

That feels so relevant to preventative health.

Community services are often treated like the soft edge of the system - the helpful bit around the outside - when really they are the powerhouse that holds it all together.

They help grassroots experience travel upwards. They help policy and funding intent travel downwards and they hold so much of the trust, local knowledge and practical wisdom that makes prevention possible in real life.

They notice patterns before they become statistics. They build trust before there is a form to fill in. They connect services before people fall through the cracks. They turn lived experience into evidence. They turn good policy intent into something practical, relational and human.

Preventative health needs grassroots advocacy and it needs top-down commitment.
But without a strong, skilled, trusted middle, the two ends struggle to meet.

Communities are full of passionate people with golden ideas. Sometimes, they just need the right tools, connections, and...
30/06/2026

Communities are full of passionate people with golden ideas. Sometimes, they just need the right tools, connections, and support to bring those ideas to life.

Lucy's Healthy and Connected Communities™ framework guides communities through six essential steps: finding a need, finding a partner, finding funding, developing and delivering projects, evaluating impact, and sharing your story.

So far, she's had the privilege of delivering this program to 62 graduates across 44 organisations, helping community members turn local insight into meaningful action.

Every group she works with reminds us how much creativity, generosity, and courage exists in our communities.

Send us a DM if you'd like to know more.

There is no doubt, when people feel supported and confident, incredible things happen!

Here's to backing bright ideas and the people brave enough to make them real.

Penny's work on being a better host was never really just about podcasting. It was always about how we create the condit...
09/06/2026

Penny's work on being a better host was never really just about podcasting. It was always about how we create the conditions for better conversations.

Most of us are hosting something every day: a meeting, a question, a new idea, a tricky disclosure or a room full of people who may or may not be pretending they do not have an opinion.

Sadly, leadership does not come with a seven-second delay button. However, there are things it shares with radio and podcast hosting: building rapport early, inviting participation, listening for what is not being said, reading the room and knowing when to turn something up, bring something down or gently move the conversation along.

In her new keynote, The Leadership Studio, Penny sets up her studio on stage and helps delegates play with the faders, so they can create better conditions for trust, contribution and conversations with a bit more life in them.

It's our 10th anniversary at Healthy Tasmania so we've been going through the archives. Today special treats are:- Our f...
18/05/2026

It's our 10th anniversary at Healthy Tasmania so we've been going through the archives. Today special treats are:
- Our first meeting
- Our first presentation (hmmm, yes, on fit balls...)
- Our first... I have no idea and I don't want to know.

Address

Launceston, TAS

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+61409937421

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