Australia: the healthiest country by 2020
National Preventative Health Strategy - Overview
A foundation for preventative health action in Australia
Table of contents
- Chair's Foreword
- The purpose of the Strategy; What is in the Strategy?
- The need for urgent, comprehensive, prioritised and sustained action; What will be different because of the Strategy?
- Prevention works; Progressive, staged and comprehensive action
The Strategy – summarised, prioritised and phased- The conceptual framework for the Preventative Health Strategy
- Strategic directions
- Ensuring effective implementation – the national infrastructure for prevention
Conclusion – a call to action- References
- Acknowledgements
Shared responsibility – developing strategic partnerships
Responsibility for preventative health is shared by all Australians:- Individuals, families and communities
- All levels of government
- Multiple sectors; including the health care system, business, industry, unions, professional associations, research community, non-government organisations and other sectors
Engage communities
Act and engage in preventative health activities with people in the settings where they live, work and play. Inform, enable and support people to make healthy choices.
- Trial community-based interventions to identify what works in prevention at the local level
- Build on existing workplace health promotion initiatives
- Promote good health and wellbeing through school policies, programs and environments
Reduce inequity
- Target disadvantage by addressing the social and structural determinants of health
- Recognise the distribution of risk across the social gradient, address the highest risk and the absolute risk in the population
Close the Gap for Indigenous communities
Reduce the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through:
- broad multi-faceted action on the social determinants of health,
- comprehensive primary health care, and
- targeted efforts towards the contribution of alcohol, tobacco and obesity to health inequities.
Act early in life and sustain action across the life course
Give children the best start in life by addressing preventative health in pregnancy and the early years
- Starting in the antenatal period, identify family risk and need, and respond early
- Monitor child health, development and wellbeing
- Service redevelopment and workforce training to meet family and childhood needs
- Better lifestyles and improved integration in the economy and community
- Attack the underlying social and environmental factors affecting healthy ageing
- Adapting health systems to the needs of the elderly
Influence markets and develop connected and coherent policies
- Ensure the public is well informed to make the best decisions about their health and wellbeing
- Keep people and families at the centre of preventative health action and empower them to manage their health and wellbeing
- Use responsive regulation to create environments that make it easy for individuals to make healthy choices
Refocus health systems towards prevention
- Include preventative health in all elements of the health care system, and especially in primary health care.
- Develop an integrated primary health care system which provides quality preventative health services, including risk factor assessment and behaviour change support, which are responsive to the local needs of the community
Ensuring effective implementation – building and sustaining infrastructure
Establish the National Prevention Agency (NPA) as an independent agency which is able to:- translate broad policy into evidence-based strategies
- monitor and evaluate national policies and programs in preventative health
- publish annual reports of the state of preventative health and progress towards the achievement of the Strategy goals for 2020
- advise COAG, through AHMC, on national priorities and options for preventative health
- administer national programs, facilitate national partnerships, and advise on national infrastructure for surveillance, monitoring, research and evaluation for preventative health
Social marketing
Develop and implement comprehensive, sustained social marketing strategies for preventative health
Data, surveillance and monitoring
Implement and extend the National Health Risk Survey Program
Develop comprehensive national surveillance systems for identified preventative health priority areas, which have the capacity to:
- collect and report against behavioural, environmental and biomedical risk factors
- incorporate newly identified/revised health indicators into datasets as appropriate
- become permanent systems of data collection
- provide representative data for the whole of population and populations of interest
- complement and build on existing data collection and monitoring mechanisms
National research infrastructure
Establish a National Strategic Framework for preventative health research
Foster leadership, mentoring and knowledge sharing across a network of preventative health research centres
Workforce development
National audit of the prevention workforce
Develop immediate, mid and long term strategies to build a competent national preventative health workforce with the capacity to meet the health care needs of all Australians
Future funding models for prevention
Develop sustainable and cost-effective funding models for a comprehensive and integrated approach to prevention both within and external to the health sector