Achieving better health in Australia in the next five years (original) (raw)
Related papers
Setting Goals for Australia's Health
Community Health Studies, 2010
Without a vision. the people perish, said the prophet. The concept of muddling through-the strategic method of Yes Minister!-guides contemporary mainstream health care. Utilitarian incrementalism. whereby we go on doing what we've been doing for the good of the greatest number, is free of visions. goals. targets. Yet the cost of doing nothing (or too little) in preventing ill-health is the same as the cost of treatment and care for preventable illness and injury plus income maintmance and associated loss of productivity. Prevention is generally preferable to treatment, although its benefits do not always accrue in the short term. Current non-planning encourages and reinforces the inequalities in the health of Australians and leaves the potential for prevention unexploited. The prepondera:ice of preventable illness and premature mortality suggests tha: the potential for intervention to improve health and reduce expenditure in the long term is very great. The National Health and Medical Research Council has expressed such a view and the Better Heal1.h Commission concluded that. while the costs of go3d prevention measures initially exceed benefits, savings in averted illness, disability. premature death and health care costs are substantial.' Predictions of sa\.ings should, of course, be treated with caution but preventable premature death, illness and injury exact a m.issive toll in Australia. Accurate costings of their burcen on health services and loss of productivity are hampered by inadequate and inaccurate information but estimates obtained from various sources give some indication of their magnitude: motor vehicle accidents 3.5billionpoornutrition3.5 billion poor nutrition 3.5billionpoornutrition6.0 billion 0 cardiovascular disease 2.0billionalcoholabuse2.0 billion alcohol abuse 2.0billionalcoholabuse1.5 billion The financial reasons for intervention are perhaps nowhere more graphically illustrated than in the case of AIDS. for which only effective health promotion measures stand between the community and a huge increase in health expenditure. It is expected that more than 2000 cases 0 1 AIDS will be diagnosed in Australia by 1990? and this will lead to major treatment and institL tional costs.
Getting Australia’s Health on Track
2016
This complementary suite of priority policy actions will help get Australia on track to reach the 2025 targets and significantly reduce preventable illness and disability in the population. The priority policy actions were developed by Australia's leading chronic disease scientists, researchers and clinicians. Designed to tackle shared risk factors for chronic disease, these actions will drive change where it is needed most.
Challenges in health and health care for Australia
The Medical journal of Australia, 2007
The next Australian Government will confront major challenges in the funding and delivery of health care. These challenges derive from: Changes in demography and disease patterns as the population ages, and the burden of chronic illness grows; Increasing costs of medical advances and the need to ensure that there are comprehensive, efficient and transparent processes for assessing health technologies; Problems with health workforce supply and distribution; Persistent concerns about the quality and safety of health services; Uncertainty about how best to balance public and private sectors in the provision and funding of health services; Recognition that we must invest more in the health of our children; The role of urban planning in creating healthy and sustainable communities; and Understanding that achieving equity in health, especially for Indigenous Australians, requires more than just providing health care services. The search for effective and lasting solutions will require a c...
Commentary: Public Health in Australia: Planning for Beyond 2000
Community Health Studies, 2010
My central message is that public health, all its professional activity, all its involvement of the community, all its research and all its concern with healthy public policy represents an alternative view of the future of health and health care to that which prevails today and that our response, as public health professionals, must be to help make that alternative vision a reality.
Setting national health goals and targets rests on the basic premise that focussed health interventions will achieve health improvements. Analyses of health differentials indicate an underlying structure to disease patterns.' Improvements in both population health status and effectiveness of the health system can result from programs aimed at modifiable factors in this underlying structure. The setting of goals and targets provides a mechanism for focussing interventions on these modifiable factors.
Australia: the healthiest country by 2020
The Medical journal of Australia, 2008
In April 2008, the Australian Government established the National Preventative Health Taskforce to develop a National Preventative Health Strategy by June 2009. The Strategy will provide a blueprint for tackling the burden of chronic disease currently caused by obesity, tobacco and excessive consumption of alcohol. The Taskforce has produced a discussion paper, Australia: the healthiest country by 2020. It presents a wide range of options, some of them contentious, to achieve this ambitious target.
Positioning health promotion as a policy priority in Australia
Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 2017
Recent Australian scholarship has provided a clear rationale for investing in health promotion policy in Australia. 1 This is consistent with the aim of the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA) 'to advance the health of all people in Australia through leadership, advocacy and support for health promotion action in practice, research, evaluation and policy'. 2 A key element of AHPA advocacy platform has involved the adoption of a multi-partisan approach. This means engagement with political parties of different persuasions as a means to support health advancement in Australia. One recent opportunity involved participation in the Labor Party's National Health Policy Summit (the Summit). It was hosted jointly by the Leader of the Opposition and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the Shadow Minister for Health, and the Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health. Held in Canberra on 3 March 2017, it was an invitation-only event attended by 150+ representatives of professional health bodies from around Australia. The authors of this editorial represented AHPA at the Summit, and the commentary reflects our views based on participation in the Summit (it does not necessarily reflect a policy position of AHPA).
Getting Australia S Health on Track 2021
Australian Health Policy Collaboration, 2021
Getting Australia's Health on Track 2021 presents a suite of priority policy actions to support measurable improvements in the health of Australians by 2025. This report updates and expands Getting Australia's Health on Track 2016. The policy recommendations have been agreed by a national collaboration of Australia's leading experts in chronic disease prevention, the Australian Health Policy Collaboration, as the initiatives Australia needs to reduce preventable chronic disease in our population.