Prevention Programs

Improving the wellbeing and health of people living in Western Sydney

Vision

To forge strategic alliances among leaders of multiple sectors in city communities and prominent organizations to combine their influence, expertise and resources and act in concert to protect the environment and equitably improve people’s health, overcome the growing high burden of chronic diseases and disability that is driving up health care costs.

Objective

To stimulate and foster collaborative action by a network of civic, academic, public & private partners from the commonwealth, NSW State, regional and area services, city Councils and local communities to undertake large scale, high impact, cross-discipline and cross sector programs to realize lifestyle and health care delivery changes that will result in more resilient, robust and healthier communities in Western Sydney.

Strategies

What we do:

Enable a healthier food supply chain that includes: more affordable & available fresh local produce; food manufacturers using a health promoting mix of ingredients; more water and less high calorie beverages; health friendly packaging and labelling; retail outlets support healthy choices and; health friendly food advertising
Promote more physical activity including: more physical activity used in daily transport (walking, bike riding); healthy urban planning- greater use of parks, paths, gyms, pools & recreation facilities; more exercise to be part of daily routine in the workplace and schools
Encourage Health Professionals to prescribe health preserving activity i.e. community health worker, GP, area health staff, pharmacists become advocates for healthy lifestyle choices and their facilities examples of best practice; work with super clinics, GP Divisions and other health care provider networks and; encourage doctors & pharmacist to combine health preserving medication with healthy lifestyles prescriptions
Enable greater community networking by: strengthen community transport to reduce isolation and improve social networking; activate shopping centres, sports clubs, and other community facilities to include health education & choices as part of their services; local media activated to promote healthy lifestyles and; festivals & events to promote healthy lifestyles
Support & certify healthier workplace, schools & education institutions by: Encouraging institutions and organizations to adopt best practices for healthy lifestyle of employees and students; Use participatory learning, financial incentives, academic credit to increase coverage of these programs; Invest in research, innovation, monitoring & evaluation and publishing success stories

How we work

Provide leadership that catalyses the establishment of a Western Sydney Leaders Forum to enable partner organizations to collaborate on the projects to improve health and wellbeing of the people in Western Sydney
Develop a strong professional communication/education expertise to include: Strategic mobilization to maximize network effectiveness; Conducting policy fora, think tanks, community consultations, media events and programs (ethnic and main stream), web based communication (portals & podcasts); develop a corporate social responsibility recognition program for the private sector
Develop assessment, monitoring, evaluation and management systems to guide the work. Appropriately use: economics, gene mapping, pathology databases, survey methods, epidemiology, formative communication research, GIS databases, mobile and internet information systems, total quality management, establishing best practices, legislation and inspection.
Secure adequate human and financial resources to mobilize and support the networks and work with the networks to ensure sufficient resources are available to them to implement the programs. This includes developing and responding to proposals from the Commonwealth and State government and securing support from the private sector. Most of the work will be supported by insertions into the partner organizations normal activities.