Youth cohort: Improving Disability Employment Study (Y-IDES)

Associate Professor Allison Milner, The University of Melbourne

Partners:

• Monash University
• Deakin University
• Brotherhood of St. Laurence
• Disability Employment Australia
• National Disability Services
• VicHealth

This project will produce new evidence about the individual, service-related, workplace and contextual factors that contribute to successful employment and health outcomes for young people with a disability and will identify when and where it might be most cost-effective to intervene. In this partnership project, the team will draw on the existing data about young people in IDES, and recruit a further 1,100 young people into a new cohort called “Youth cohort: Improving Disability Employment Study’ (Y-IDES). This is the first cohort to explicitly assess the links between health and transition into work and early employment among young people with disabilities.

RESPOND: Reflective evidence and systems interventions to prevent obesity and non-communicable disease

Professor Steven Allender, Deakin University

Partners:

• Beechworth Health Service
• Benalla Health, as lead agency for Central Hume Primary Care Partnership
• Department of Health and Human Services, Victoria
• Gateway Health
• Goulburn Valley Family Care Inc, as lead agency for Goulburn Valley Primary Care Partnership
• Nexus Primary Health, as lead agency for Lower Hume Primary Care Partnership
• Numurkah District Health Service
• Gateway Health, as lead agency for Upper Hume Primary Care Partnership
• VicHealth
• Yarrawonga Health

The practical application of systems science to the prevention of chronic disease, particularly obesity, has increased rapidly in recent years with Australia leading the world (e.g. Healthy Together Victoria and ACT It's You're Move). This partnership project aims to build on the lessons learned in the research team's strong history in community-based obesity prevention interventions across regional Victoria. We propose that permanent reductions in childhood obesity are possible if the complex and dynamic causes of obesity are well understood and addressed through increased community ownership and responsibility. To put this hypothesis into action, we aim to embed best practice for obesity prevention into existing community systems (e.g. health services, local council, schools) across regional Victoria with routine, reflexive and comprehensive monitoring of changes in obesity and systems.

Scalability of the Transform-Us! Program to promote children’s physical activity and reduce prolonged sitting in Victorian primary schools

Professor Jo Salmon

• VicHealth
• Department of Education and Training
• Charles Sturt University

This proposal builds on the success of Transform-Us!, a large 2.5 year intervention that involved over 220 teachers and more than 1,600 children and parents from 20 government primary schools in Victoria. Transform-Us! was an innovative and successful school- and home-based randomised controlled trial that was supported by funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (2009-2013) and the Diabetes Australia Research Trust (2011).

Implementation research is needed to examine the translatability of the program more widely across Victoria. A scalable, sustainable and accessible method of program dissemination is required, and is therefore a key next step in testing the population-wide impact of this program. The aim of this proposal is to examine the scalability of Transform-Us! using an online dissemination method and multiple avenues of reach to primary schools across Victoria via VicHealth and other key partners. We will assess which factors are associated with the successful translation of Transform-Us! into practice and policy, based on criteria within the RE-AIM framework of program evaluation (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance). This will enable us to explore the feasibility of disseminating Transform-Us! in a real-world context and under real-world conditions. This is the critical next step to ascertain the program's potential public health impact at a population-level.

A multi-component supermarket intervention to promote healthy eating

Dr Adrian Cameron, Deakin University

Partners:

• Champions IGA
• City of Greater Bendigo
• City of Whittlesea
• City of Greater Geelong
• Barwon Health
• Bellarine Community Health
• VicHealth

With unhealthy diets now the biggest contributor to life years lost in Australia, there is an urgent need for interventions that transform the unhealthy food environments that have driven the obesity epidemic over the last three decades. Supermarkets, which account for the majority of food purchases in Australia, and which heavily promote unhealthy foods, are a key setting for such interventions. This real-world trial tests the effectiveness and feasibility of a packaged intervention designed to promote healthy eating in the supermarket environment. It builds on VicHealth funded pilot trials (2015 Innovation Research Grant) of three discrete supermarket healthy eating interventions currently being completed in seven supermarkets in regional Victoria. The proposed project takes the most effective and feasible elements of those interventions and combines them into a packaged intervention that also includes media promotion. From three intervention stores in the pilot studies, this next phase involves scaling up successful elements of the trial to a broad range of other Victorian IGA stores. This unique project involves a collaboration between Deakin University, the Champions IGA chain and local government partners.

2011

Does access to paid parental leave improve young mother's social and economic participation and mental health?

Professor Anne Kavanagh, University of Melbourne

Young mothers are at risk of low levels of social and economic participation and poorer mental health following the birth of their child. The government’s new paid parental leave scheme may alleviate some of these deleterious outcomes.  We will estimate the proportion of women eligible for paid parental leave who receive it and whether receipt of paid leave leads to improved social, economic and mental health outcomes. We will test the effectiveness of an intervention, delivered at the time of an antenatal visit, in improving young women’s uptake of paid parental leave and examine whether this improves their social and economic participation and mental health following birth.

2010

Which types of emotions in anti-smoking ads motivate smokers to quit, especially disadvantaged smokers?

Associate Professor Sarah Durkin, Cancel Council

This research explores the optimum levels and types of emotions evoked by anti-smoking ads about the health effects of smoking in the broad population. It also aims to explore the impact of using emotion in anti-smoking ads in low socio-economic (SES) smokers.  The research will be used to inform whether campaign messages need to be tailored for disadvantaged group.