Emerging issues
Discovery grants
VicHealth's Discovery Grant Scheme 2008 is intended to foster emerging ideas and conceptual research within the following areas:
- The prevention of chronic disease
- Workplace health promotion
- Alcohol harm reduction
- Economics of health promotion
- Application of information technologies to health promotion
Below are the four innovative Victorian projects that were funded through VicHealth’s inaugural Discovery Grants scheme.
Integrating Human Rights and Bioethics into Public Health Research and Policy
Monash University, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine
The grant supports two projects. The first project responds to a concern expressed by the Victorian Public Health Research and Education Council of the relationship between ethics review and research governance. The second project is to assess the impact of integrating ethical and human rights debate into public health policy debate within special interest groups of the Public Health Association of Australia.
Community-Campus Partnership for Violence Prevention
La Trobe University, School of Public Health
This project is to support the development of a partnership between two universities (La Trobe and Melbourne) to facilitate community-based participatory research to address violence issues in the City of Whittlesea.
Painless service at the checkout
Arthritis Foundation of Victoria
This project is to develop and trial protocols that would safely allow workers to choose whether to stand or sit (on ergonomically designed sit/stand stools) as they carry out their duties at the checkout.
WaterMatters: Understanding the relationship between the management of water and community health in North East Victoria
The Centre for Continuing Education Inc.
This project is developing a cross-sectoral history of the changes to the environment, community, regulation and management of water and how these link to community health in North East Victoria.
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The political economy of public health
If an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure, why then isn’t health promotion funded appropriately by governments and societies? This project is exploring how decisions regarding funding for health care services are made and how we can provide better information to ensure a more significant consideration of the benefits of investing in health promotion.
- Read the VicHealth Letter (Winter 2005) exploring this very issue.
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Climate change and health
Current VicHealth work relevant to climate change and health includes programs and initiatives such as our investments in healthy eating, active transport, planning for healthy built environments and mental health promotion. Climate change represents a greater threat to the health of the most vulnerable in our society, which are VicHealth’s priority groups.
As opportunities arise VicHealth actively makes submissions to government on issues such as liveability, the Audit of Melbourne 2030, food pricing, the green paper on Land and Biodiversity in a Time of Climate Change, and other areas.
VicHealth has also undertaken significant work:
- hosting events such as the Food, Health and Sustainability roundtable to bring together government and private sectors. Health and Ecology Forum July 2005
- in partnership with the Planning Institute of Australia on planning for healthy environments
- with Parks Victoria on the benefits of parks to health, and
- with the Department of Sustainability and Environment and local government around the impacts of the changing environment in which we live on human health.
Asia-Pacific Eco Health Conference 2007
In November 2007 VicHealth supported the Asia-Pacific Eco Health Conference 2007 Ecology and Health: People & Places in a Changing World. The themes for the conference included:
- Cultural change, environments and health
- Measuring the links between environments and health
- Ecological literacies in health practice
- Systemic thinking, environments and health
- Indigenous and local perspectives, environments and health
For a copy of the background papers download
Other related material
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Ecology and health
Our health and the health of the environment are inextricably linked; however, it is also acknowledged that this link is complex and one that is not broadly understood. As part of our exploration of ecology and health VicHealth hosted a round table forum with 22 key stakeholders from around the country on 25 July 2005. Click here for more information and copies of the forum summary and presentations.
As an outcome of this forum VicHealth produced an edition of the VicHealth Letter: Healthy Planet, Healthy People exploring a variety of concepts and perspectives related to ecology and health.
VicHealth have also funded a local community to look at the interaction between water allocation and usage and a rural community’s health.
See also Planning healthy environments