The Australian Government recently announced a national Preventative Health Taskforce to consult widely on actions to encourage a dynamic, forward-thinking preventative health agenda for Australia. The Taskforce has developed a number of discussion papers focusing on Australia: The Healthiest Country by 2020.
This is an exciting time for Australian health policy, and ICLEI Oceania is keen to participate in the preventative health agenda, as thriving communities – alongside resilient ecosystems – is the cornerstone to Australia's sustainable development. In particular, we believe the preventative health agenda offers many opportunities to consolidate local government's role in sustainable and resilient community health and wellbeing.
To ensure a local government perspective was incorporated into the consultation phase and to support the next stage of Cities for Safe and Healthy Communities, ICLEI Oceania submitted a comprehensive response to the Taskforce.
The submission has focused on the main discussion paper and the Technical Report No. 3 on reducing alcohol-related harms.
The submission:
- Recognises the importance of support structures in order to enable the work of the Taskforce to be implemented. This will need to include better data management access, capacity building for local governments, and more action-based research to provide timely answers to emerging preventative health concerns
- Applauds the use of targets and performance indicators to drive action and recommends the collation of data by socio-economic status as well as by Indigenous status
- Identifies direct and indirect roles for local government in preventative health
- Commends the use of outlet density as a national performance indicator. For this to be meaningful to the community, local governments need to be supported to utilise these in planning actions, reporting to the community, and monitoring outcomes, and complemented by a range of locally-specific performance indicators such as assault rates
- Reinforces that local government has a key role to play in preventative health, and in managing alcohol related harms, particularly through managing the physical availability of alcohol.
We believe our Cities for Safe and Healthy Communities program – currently in its establishment phase – offers an ideal opportunity to the National Preventative Health Taskforce to deliver strategies immediately through a local government capacity-building infrastructure.
We acknowledge the contribution made by the Cities for Safe and Healthy Communities program Foundation Councils during at the December 2008 workshops in many of the themes developed in this submission.
ICLEI Oceania encourages you to read our response and consider supporting us in our recommendations by writing to the national Preventative Health Taskforce in support of our response
ICLEI Oceania looks forward to working across the preventative health sector in 2009 to advance the role of local government in social sustainability goals and in fostering vibrant, resilient and adaptive communities for Australia's future.
Consultations across Australia are currently being held to discuss strategic action, and to plan for Australia's future health. For more information please visit the national Preventative Health Taskforce website.
Please contact Mark Boyd, Director – Cities for Safe and Healthy Communities if you would like to discuss this submission further. Also feel free to forward our response to your contacts and relevant stakeholders.
