Paul Harvey

Happy Retirement, Paul Harvey

Hepatitis SA bids a fond farewell to Paul Harvey, Information and Communication Manager at Hepatitis NSW, after 28 years in the sector. Many of Hepatitis SA’s members and readers of Hepatitis SA Community News will remember that Paul was responsible for producing the excellent Hep Review, which Hepatitis NSW kindly allowed us to distribute in South Australia.

Many people living with hepatitis C in SA will also remember Paul as the driving force behind the online support forum HepCAustralasia.

Before Paul retired at the end of January 2022, Hepatitis Australia asked Paul about his experiences at Hepatitis NSW:

“Way back in the early 90s, I surprised myself by getting involved in a community group. I’d been living a bohemian and rather aimless life (lots of immediate pleasures but not a lot of commitment or direction), and I quickly realised and enjoyed a feeling of anchoring from the support group. We were a disparate group of people here in Sydney, initially around a dozen, and we leaned on each other’s skill sets.

“I discovered personal skills which included creating documents: how-to guides for volunteer phone workers and producing newsletters. Other people worked with interstate collaboration, fundraising, media and volunteer recruitment and management. Our community group was a fertile petri-dish and we quickly grew and expanded our activities. It all seemed very exciting to me.

“Our early milestone events seem very clear: we gained funding from NSW Health, a seeding grant; we secured our first office, a temporary room in a commercial building; we employed our first CEO, Stuart Loveday, a move that set us up for decades to come. Other milestones were less obvious. Whether it was individual medical specialists or professional bodies, local health districts, Sydney City, South Sydney or other LGA councils, other States and Territories, nursing, AOD and NSP networks, we would work with almost everyone who shared our path or had mutual goals.

“My work as a person with lived experience and as a speaker was always tinged with feelings of vulnerability and fears around stigma. It was about a mixture of low self-esteem and fear of scrutiny or criticism; traits that played some role in my contracting hep C back in the 1980s.

“With Hepatitis NSW I didn’t see myself as a confident or clever public speaker, but others—effective and engaging speakers—did exist, and they played valuable roles while I tended to avoid the limelight. Perhaps our most effective speakers were our Community Mobilisation Volunteers. These stars were recruited in the lead up to 2016 and they worked hard building community action in their local regions across NSW always with an eye on their local politicians and media.

“Looking back on 28 years of work in this sector, there is much that I am proud of. There is our sheer volume of output. I remember working closely with Stuart Loveday, putting in long days, often working overnighters to meet so many deadlines. On the specifics side of things, in addition to the past Hep Review magazine, I am very proud of the recent ‘Triffids’ hep C cures video and the current ‘Cold Chisel’ hep C cures video [see image above]. These are projects that were hugely enjoyable in a creative sense and I’ll remember them fondly.

Hepatitis NSW’s videos can be viewed at bit.ly/3rTFN3i

“But there is an oft-forgotten project: the HepCAustralasia online support forum, which up until 2016 was an integral part of our online presence. It is hard to over-emphasise the impact that the forum had on the Australian and New Zealand hep C landscape. Over a decade, it supported thousands of individuals through the difficult pre-DAA years of hepatitis C. ‘Newbies’ became members; some became moderators; some became conference speakers. It was a pleasure and honour to work with the dedicated team of people, all volunteers, who built and maintained an incredibly vibrant healing and supportive environment.”.