Mob Pod van at the Close the Gap day event in Bli Bli. Image: QAIHC
Manngoor Dja Aboriginal health services began the rollout of its innovative Mob Pod with an opening at its Family Hub Clinic in Gympie.
Held on Close the Gap Day, 20 March 2025, the community-led mobile health innovation addressed longstanding issues of health system access for outlying towns in the Sunshine Coast and Gympie regions.
Mob Pod is a mobile primary health service providing both in-person and telehealth facilities to communities of the Gympie-Cooloola and Noosa hinterlands, including Tin Can Bay, Cooloola Cove, Glenwood and Pomona.
It’s a multi-disciplinary facility including nurse-led clinics, mental health support, specialist outreach, and the aforementioned telehealth.
Manngoor Dja Director Karen Kennedy stated in a speech: “The Mob Pod is more than just a mobile health service — it’s a game changer for our regional and rural communities.”
“For too long, access to healthcare has been a major challenge, especially for those living outside major towns.”
Paul Penumala, Manngoor Dja’s General Manager of Strategy and Service Development predicts the program will succeed due to its community-led design.
“We really wanted to understand the lived experience and local bottlenecks and enablers of good health of people in further flung communities,” Mr Penumala said.
“The co-design of Mob Pod was really important. We held workshops, pop-up events and yarning circles to truly understand local needs.
“More than 80 per cent of the people in the Gympie region are in the bottom 40 per cent of the population when it comes to disadvantage; and there are a number of inequities which fuel the health gap in the region: high rates of chronic disease, physical inactivity, disability, socio-economic disadvantage and travel.”
Mob Pod was partially funded through a $1.6million grant, over four years, from the Australian Government’s Innovative Models of Care program. The fit out was funded by the Country to Coast PHN.
Mr Penumala hoped the mobile services model would be replicated in other regions.
“Other ACCHOs exploring flexible outreach services would do well to ask their communities what they think about setting up something like their own local Mob Pod.”
