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Healthy Together NewsletterThinking, acting, systems and celebrating.
Healthy Together NewsletterThinking and acting systems
Healthy Together Victoria is a jointly funded initiative of the State Government of Victoria and the Australian Government.
Influencing the system 2–3 Being adaptive and responsive 4–5 Experimenting 6–7 Scaling up 8–9
A workforce Q & A on a systems approach: Applying systems 10 Challenges 11 Advice 12
Issue 12: June 2014
The Minister for Health with health promotion practitioners from Healthy Together Mildura.
To try to take this out of the conceptual space and into the practical, we have framed this entire newsletter around what thinking and acting systems means from a practitioner point of view – focusing on a couple of the key strategies we are applying:
• influencing the system • being reflective, responsive and adaptive • experimenting • scaling-up.
We asked a number of health promotion practitioners working in Healthy Together Communities and partnering agencies to share their experiences of applying a complex systems approach to prevention.
Healthy Together Newsletter Issue 12: June 2014
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Working together for collective impactThe recent Victorian Healthy Eating Enterprise (VHEE) strategic planning roundtable saw 27 organisations with an interest in promoting healthy eating join forces to impact Victoria’s food system. By thinking ‘whole of system’ and acting collaboratively, these stakeholders have the potential to change the way the food system operates. At this event, the Melbourne Markets Authority presented on their work in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, with a particular focus on the market’s relocation to Epping – part of Healthy Together Whittlesea’s catchment. Participating organisations generated a range of ideas for how improvements could be made in the food system – including influencing local food services and manufacturers to include more fruit and vegetables in their products, as well as supporting communities to work with their local green grocers.
Influencing the system
A system is made up of many actors (such as organisations, businesses and communities) and other elements (such as legislation, regulations and resources) which are connected in various ways. The systems approach tries to understand the elements of the system and how they interact and relate to each other. It seeks to find ways to influence and change the way the system operates.
We asked some of our practitioners to tell us what this means in the work they do across the state, and within their communities.
Influencing the food systemNutrition Australia is promoting innovation and systems change through a supermarket initiative that sees healthy snacks becoming easier to select and purchase in a large retail chain.A partnership between Nutrition Australia and Woolworths has developed a one-stop-shop for healthy snacks. This new supermarket section is designed to provide healthy snack and lunchbox options for children, students and adults, and was launched in 100 stores in October last year.
All the products in this new section meet Nutrition Australia’s healthy snack criteria, ensuring they are based on core foods – such as wholegrains, fruit and vegetables – with limited salt, saturated fat and added sugars, and are available in snack-size portions.
‘The initiative makes it easier for shoppers to identify and choose healthy snacks for themselves or their family,’ said Lucinda Hancock from Nutrition Australia.
‘Food manufacturers are now developing new products and reformulating current ones to meet the healthy snacking criteria, which at the end of the day provides more healthy choices for consumers,’ said Ms Hancock.
‘To date, we have assessed over 200 snack products for the section, with 135 successfully meeting the criteria,’ said Ms Hancock.
Additional products will be re-assessed for inclusion if they are reformulated or resized.
For more information and a list of participating stores visit www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/woolworths-healthy-lunchbox
‘Recognise that you need partners on board to achieve change. If you want to change the system you need others
in the system to help you – you can’t do it by yourself!’ – Health Promotion Officer,
Healthy Together Bendigo
‘Keep thinking about your points of leverage across the system – which are currently the most amenable to change? And which will make the biggest positive difference?’ – Health Promotion Officer,
Healthy Together Hume
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Healthy Together Newsletter Issue 12: June 2014
YMCA Victoria also presented on their work to improve healthy eating across their sport and recreation facilities, generating a commitment to investigate new partnerships to support healthy eating at sports venues.
‘It’s an exciting time for these collaborations and a great opportunity for others to get involved’, said Veronica Graham, Manager, Food Systems and Nutrition Policy. ‘Avoiding duplication of effort means more energy can be put into extending reach.’
The VHEE is becoming a strong platform for collaboration to ‘think big’ by forming partnerships, building networks and using existing resources and capacity to have a greater impact on the food system and the population. As Kirsten Corben, Health Promotion Lead at Alfred Health said, ‘We are committed to leading by example and sharing our experience with other organisations within and beyond the health setting.’
Influencing the system to support physical activity Traffic congestion around schools is not just an issue for the council’s traffic management team, it is an opportunity to influence decision making and support physical activity among students and staff by addressing the barriers to active transport.The Safe and Sustainable Travel Around Schools (SSTAS) pilot is a new initiative that sees Healthy Together Wyndham working in partnership with council departments – including engineering, traffic management, social development, strategic planning and legislative services – to ease congestion by boosting active transport.
Selected schools within the Wyndham local government area have been identified as experiencing high traffic congestion issues particularly around school drop–off and pick–up times. The SSTAS project will empower these schools to identify barriers to active travel and enable them to develop and implement a school travel plan. Each school travel plan will address local traffic issues around schools and encourage active and sustainable travel methods such as walking, cycling or public transport.
By reframing traffic congestion as an opportunity for active transport, the initiative hopes to not only reduce traffic and local congestion but improve safety around schools, increase physical activity levels in staff and students, and increase community connectedness.
Wyndham City is supporting active travel among students by reframing school traffic congestion as an opportunity.
Find out more If you are interested in understanding and influencing your local food system, Healthy Food Connect resources are now available at These resources provide a process for undertaking a local food access needs assessment, identifying and prioritising actions, forming a local food network, implementing healthy food access initiatives and including healthy food access in local government policy and planning.
If you are interested in influencing the built environment, you might want to start by exploring the Heart Foundation’s Healthy by Design initiative:
Healthy Together Communities and Victoria’s heart attack hotspots (together accounting for 20 local government areas) can access support for sustainable and healthy environmental design initiatives via a full–time position at the Heart Foundation (Victoria).
www.heartfoundation.org.au/driving-change/current-campaigns/local-campaigns/Pages/victoria-healthy-design.aspx.
www.health.vic.gov.au/prevention/initiatives/healthy-food-connect.htm.
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Being adaptive and responsive
Working within a systems approach requires reflection and flexibility. We need to be able to adapt to the situation around us, take advantage of opportunities as they arise, and learn and move on from initiatives that are not working as well as we had hoped. Reflecting, adapting and being responsive to the changing system becomes a core part of the way we work.
Of the 32 secondary schools across the state that have already registered to participate in the Achievement Program, 24 have a secondary school nurse.
Recognising the synergies between the Secondary School Nursing Program and the Achievement Program in supporting a whole-school approach to health promotion, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, the Department of Health and the Centre of Excellence in Intervention and Prevention Science are reviewing opportunities to strengthen alignment.
This work has seen the Secondary School Nursing Program contributing expert advice to support the development of Achievement Program benchmarks, while also adapting their planning process to better align with the Achievement Program cycle.
Secondary school nurses are also being encouraged to join the Healthy Together Achievement Program Health and Community Professionals Network as leaders promoting health and wellbeing in their local communities. Through this network, secondary school nurses are accessing free professional development and evidence-based resources to assist their support role with schools.
Throughout implementation, close links will be maintained between the Achievement Program and the Secondary Schools Nursing Program to facilitate system feedback and adaptation of the Achievement Program model.
Secondary school nurses are playing a central role in the Achievement Program The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, the Department of Health and the Centre of Excellence in Intervention and Prevention Science are working together to promote the health of young people and the community via the Healthy Together Achievement Program and the Secondary Schools Nursing Program. On 18 March the Parliamentary Secretary for Health Georgie Crozier MLC launched the Healthy Together Achievement Program for secondary schools at Pakenham Secondary College. This event celebrated the school’s commitment to health and wellbeing by being one of the first secondary schools to register for the Achievement Program.
Pakenham Secondary College also has a long-standing partnership with the Secondary School Nursing Program, which supports approximately two-thirds of government secondary schools to reduce risks and promote health for young people.
The Healthy Together Achievement Program for secondary schools is launched at Pakenham Secondary College with Home Economics Victoria and the Parliamentary Secretary for Health Georgie Crozier.
‘The systems approach is about local solutions to local problems. It’s not a one size fits all program.’ – Health Promotion
Officer, Healthy Together Bendigo
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Healthy Together Newsletter Issue 12: June 2014
Adapting to the needs of local organisations Healthy Together Hume discovered early on that they needed to develop relationships with local businesses and ‘prove themselves’ in the local business community before they could start working to create healthier workplaces. They found that it took between five and twelve contacts with local organisations, ranging from contact with interested staff, to presentations with senior executives, before they were willing to undertake workplace initiatives and register for the Healthy Together Achievement Program.
With this lesson in mind, the team in Hume set about creating an approach for 2014 that meets the needs of local businesses and supports them to create healthier environments. The new approach places an emphasis on a cycle of engagement with local businesses, from mass mailouts and newsletters, to face-to-face meetings
and presentations with staff, to networking opportunities and recognition events for decision makers and finally professional development workshops for staff involved in implementation. This approach also sees the team move from general discussions with businesses through to detailed support for creating healthier environments.
‘Knowing that it takes between five and twelve ‘touches’ for local organisations to want to get involved, we orchestrated a program of events and opportunities that encourage and build on these contacts to support health and wellbeing in local workplaces,’ said Ben Norden, Coordinator Health Promotion Settings at Hume City Council.
Should an organisation not wish to take up the opportunities offered by the team after five to twelve contacts, they return to the basic level of engagement so that they have the opportunity to connect with the team at a later stage if they wish to.
This strategy has seen the Healthy Together Hume team selling out a recent business breakfast event and more than doubling the number of Healthy Together Achievement Program registrations this year.
Mayor Casey Nunn, Councillor Chandra Bamunusighe and John Monaghan, Manager Infrastructure Planning from Hume City Council are seeing the impact of Healthy Together Hume’s strategies to adapt to the needs of local businesses.
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Experimenting
Experimentation is central to the complex systems approach adopted by Healthy Together Victoria and the Healthy Together Communities. To understand what interventions will work best, we design small-scale experiments to provide insight and direction for the future. In the language of complexity theory, we ‘probe, sense and respond’. These experiments are based on evidence and experience, and are designed to be safe-to-fail: if they work, they can be amplified, if they don’t, they can be withdrawn without significant impact on investment and resources.
Experimenting in the Wodonga systemHealthy Together Wodonga and their Be Active colleagues have taken the idea of safe-to-fail experiments and applied it locally to encourage, mentor and resource the local community to deliver better health outcomes.Through a new initiative, local community groups are being encouraged to work together and experiment to improve healthy eating and physical activity in Wodonga. With the support of a small grant, community groups have the opportunity to try a new idea, scale up existing initiatives or replicate an initiative that they have seen operating elsewhere.
For instance, a school may want to scale up their vegetable garden to provide a garden for surrounding residents, or a community group may wish to establish a successful walking program in the local area.
To broaden thinking, cross-pollinate ideas and encourage community partnerships and shared action, all grant applicants participate in an innovation workshop. In this session, ideas are shared, linkages are created, and opportunities to scale up or leverage across projects and across the community are identified.
To build a sense of community action, the grant applicants then pitch their ideas to fellow applicants and vote for the initiatives they think will make the biggest difference to the community.
As with all experiments, this initiative is not about ensuring success or avoiding failure, but about experimenting with ideas in small, contained ways to provide learning. The first projects generated by this initiative are expected to commence in June.
Environmental prompts The Department of Health and Healthy Together Bendigo experimented with environmental prompts as part of the Start With and Let’s walk Eaglehawk campaigns. Results showed that the decals were successful in communicating the message that walking was easy and fun, but a learning for next time is to place them in locations that target non-walkers – such as car parks.
‘This approach poses the potential removal of traditional limits; the challenge is will we let them go?’ – Health Promotion
Officer, Healthy Together Hume
‘There is so much room to move with systems thinking, which I love! There’s
plenty of opportunity for innovation, trial and error. It’s great that if something isn’t
working I can stop and try something else!’ – Coordinator, Healthy Together Latrobe
Environmental prompts successfully communicated the message in Bendigo.
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Healthy Together Newsletter Issue 12: June 2014
A little tree of safe-to-fails Healthy Together Greater Dandenong have come up with a unique way of keeping their ideas flowing and experimentation active. Exploring the barriers to implementation in Greater Dandenong, the team brainstormed a range of issues that could potentially impact on the implementation of healthy eating and physical activity initiatives within council, and within the local community. To test this impact, the team came up with numerous safe-to-fail experiments to gain a greater understanding of the interventions that might make a difference.
The experiments range from ideas to address internal barriers, to ideas for working with community members, partner organisations and key settings. The approach has also encouraged other departments within council and partnering organisations to develop their own safe-to-fail experiments to work more effectively within the system.
These safe-to-fail activities now live on the team’s safe-to-fail tree and are regularly added to, making the emerging possibilities visible.
Find out more If you are interested in investigating complexity and safe-to-fail experiments, Cognitive Edge (www.cognitive-edge.com) offer training in complexity theory and are in Australia in June this year – keep an eye out for their courses. A number of local facilitators are also trained in these approaches, so investigate local options as well.
Safe-to-fail experiments live and grow in Healthy Together Greater Dandenong.
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‘AiGroup is focusing principally on program expansion, taking the original scale and increasing the scope through members, affiliated associations and industry networks.
‘Partnerships are a great way to gain access to industry knowledge, expertise and networks. We are able to share information and provide assistance on a range of issues to support the shared vision, as well as practical initiatives such as marketing and promotion.
‘For example, we are working with Healthy Together Communities in Geelong and Knox to promote the Achievement Program through our HR networks in these areas.’
Geri Sumpter, Senior OHS Consultant at VECCI, explains that she is working with the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce and several Healthy Together Communities to support joint opportunities.
‘A Melbourne Chamber of Commerce event in July will bring together a range of organisations to discuss the Achievement Program and the benefits of workplace health and wellbeing.’
‘We’re also promoting a number of Healthy Together Community led events to our members, such as in Latrobe and Bendigo where we will run joint presentations. We’ve also used direct mail to promote local business breakfasts, leading to a spike in registrations.
‘VECCI has also registered for the Achievement Program and will showcase our progress towards meeting the benchmarks through our many publications, encouraging members to join us on the journey.’
Scaling up for successThe Healthy Together Achievement Program provides a quality framework for creating healthier schools, early childhood services and workplaces. Increasing the scale is key to creating a sustainable model that will have wide-reaching, long-term impacts. At the state level, partnerships with key organisations are helping to scale up the Achievement Program. Recently formed industry partnerships with the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) and the Australian Industry Group (AiGroup) see dedicated business experts based within both organisations working hard to promote the Achievement Program to their members.
Carolyn Macgill, Principal Advisor at AiGroup, says that partnerships with relevant, expert industry groups are beneficial because they offer greater scale and scope to achieve significant reach across the state.
Scaling up
To have an impact on the health of the Victorian population, we need to focus on scale. We need to make the most effective use of limited resources by focusing on making changes that impact across multiple groups and multiple settings to reach hundreds of organisations and thousands of people.
We asked our practitioners to share some examples of how they are scaling up their work to deliver population outcomes.
Football legend David Parkin addresses a room of business leaders at a Healthy Together Victoria breakfast event hosted by the Hon David Davis, Minister for Health. The event challenged leaders to do more to support and promote good health, starting with signing up for the Achievement Program.
‘Think big: set up your work to have the greatest reach and impact … and be
creative!’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Bendigo
‘We need to think strategically, with long term goals in mind. It’s not about the fast
“wins” but the long term change.’ – Program Lead, Healthy Together Wyndham
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Healthy Together Newsletter Issue 12: June 2014
Scaling up health promotion in Healthy Together CommunitiesHealthy Together teams across the state are using networks to scale up their activities and extend their reach into settings and non-traditional health areas. Healthy Together teams currently participate in over 300 networks, many of them newly created. We asked some of the Healthy Together Communities to tell us how they scale up their work. Healthy Together Bendigo is working with business professionals in the local area via the Healthy Workplaces Network for Healthy Together Achievement Program registered businesses. The quarterly meetings of the network provide opportunities for over 30 Bendigo businesses to gain ideas and practical advice about implementing the Achievement Program and improving their workplace environment, while also providing opportunities to network with other professionals. The Bendigo Business Council, the City of Greater Bendigo’s Economic Development Unit and Bendigo Community Health Services have all contributed to strengthening and growing the network via existing relationships with local businesses.
Three council-managed sport and recreation facilities in Greater Dandenong are beginning an initiative promoting healthy food to the community with the support of Healthy Together Greater Dandenong and the Healthy Eating
Advisory Service. The point of difference with this initiative is that it has been developed at scale, with the executive team at Belgravia Leisure rolling out changes across all 89 of their Victorian facilities.
Early Years breakfasts are an opportunity for knowledge exchange among service providers in Geelong. Between 30–50 early years services regularly attend these breakfast events to hear from and discuss programs, services, initiatives and best practices that will help them to create healthier places for children. Each event is themed around one of the Healthy Together Achievement Program benchmarks, with incentives and support offered to progress organisations through the Achievement Program process and achieve recognition for their efforts.
In Greater Bendigo, children’s settings in outlying towns are encouraged to form clusters to support each other to create a healthier environment. The first of these, the Elmore Health and Wellbeing team, are working together on the Healthy Together Achievement Program, taking a community wide approach to improving the health of the 3,200 strong population. Healthy Together Bendigo are exploring expanding this model of support to other rural communities within Greater Bendigo.
Healthy Together Latrobe is working with the local Power Generators Network to reach thousands of workers in one of the largest workforce sectors in the local area – the power generation industry. Healthy Together Latrobe is working with the Network to develop a joint statement of commitment to promoting health and wellbeing, hosting networking lunches to support knowledge exchange, and investigating the development of a joint calendar of events to support ongoing learning and the implementation of the Healthy Together Achievement Program.
Shane Farnsworth from Hyline Australia with Robyn Lindsay and Andrea Noonan from Bendigo Health at the Healthy Workplaces Network in Bendigo.
Find out more The Healthy Together Achievement Program is open to all Victorian primary and secondary schools, early years services and workplaces across the state, with support provided for health promotion staff working within these settings. You can access further information at www.achievementprogram.healthytogether.vic.gov.au.
Also, see our new workplaces video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2_ttQ-EDQ.
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We asked a number of health promotion practitioners working in Healthy Together Communities and partnering agencies to share their experiences of applying a complex systems approach to prevention.
What is it like to apply a systems approach to prevention?Along with terms such as ‘exciting’, ‘refreshing’ and ‘throwing out the rule book’ our Healthy Together colleagues and partners provided some insightful comments about what the approach means in terms of the way they work.‘Nothing is linear when thinking systems. It is not simply a matter of undertaking a needs assessment, a literature review, developing, implementing and evaluating a program like we were all taught at university. You need to be thinking all the time about how and what you are doing links to a bigger picture? How is it re-enforcing the same message to other sectors of the community? How does it link with what your colleagues are working on? Nothing stands alone with a systems approach to health promotion/prevention. You need to be flexible in your actions, and your thoughts. There is no three year plan with defined interventions and neat timelines to guide you.’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Mildura
‘This approach challenges us and permits us to identify and work where the biggest differences/wins can be made anywhere across our system. That’s really exciting!’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Hume
‘We are now collaborating with more organisations than previously and looking for opportunities to leverage off each other’s work to get our messages out to our target audience. There is more sharing of ideas and opportunities and we are working toward one common goal across a range of organisations and sectors. There is also more of an emphasis on achieving lasting and sustainable change and having the involvement and commitment from government to making this all happen and coordinating the effort has also been invaluable. We couldn’t have achieved what we have to date (and will continue to achieve) without government support.’ – Program Manager, Partnering organisation
‘A systems approach recognises that there are numerous people and factors that contribute to the success or failure of an intervention. It involves multi-level strategy and many and varied iterations of engagement and implementation.’ – Coordinator, Healthy Together Latrobe
‘This approach means that we are better able to deal with the big underlying issues (social determinants) that are causing certain behaviours and situations. We are able to take a long term view of prevention and focus on setting up the policies and structures that will last, rather than focusing on “getting bums on seats”. And acting within a system is a concept that is somewhat easy to “sell” as it can be made to resonate with groups with different priorities. For instance, if you want to improve active travel around a school, you can collaborate with traffic engineers and legislative services teams because you can frame the problem in a way they understand and link active travel to infrastructure and traffic management. It allows you to wear whatever hat you need to gain support and collaboration.’ – Program Lead, Healthy Together Wyndham
‘In my previous work, interventions were targeted at individuals or small population groups based on greatest need. Taking a systems approach to prevention is different. It is about large scale, whole of population interventions and it allows us to identify the big opportunities locally, work with existing and new stakeholders, and harness community passion to create a change.’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Bendigo
Find out more If you are interested in learning more about our approach, see our video – Complex systems thinking explained. Uncomplicatedly.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZU8MYGqm2s
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Healthy Together Newsletter Issue 12: June 2014
What have been the biggest challenges in applying this approach in your community?While applying a complex systems approach can be rewarding, it isn’t always easy. Our Healthy Together practitioners pointed to a number of challenges they had faced including finding the best places within the system to intervene, learning to ‘think big’ and simply keeping up with everything that is going on!
‘Setting up structures takes time and is often two steps forward, one step back! It is sometimes easy to recognise the people involved or ‘thing’ within the system that you want to change, but knowing how to do it and having the ability to change it is not always clear. Intervening in the system can take a lot of effort and requires others to be on board - partnerships are essential!’ – Program Lead, Healthy Together Wyndham
‘Not working to scripted project plans is difficult as that is how we have been trained ... but is also freeing as we no longer feel tied to an intervention that isn’t working – if it doesn’t work we change it. We have the ability to respond to the opportunities around us.’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Bendigo
‘One of the challenges I think is the difficult balance between relying on the evidence base (which we are taught to do) with having a focus on changing the health culture of the community. In order to change a culture you have to think beyond the evidence base, think about who and what influences health and the culture and try new things. Knowing where to put your energy and resources for the best outcome is never clear cut – there is no right answer and no formula for locating a leverage point, sometimes you put a lot of work into something that just doesn’t fly ... it can be difficult and frustrating. It can sometimes feel like you are thrashing your way through the jungle with a machete, you finally reach a path but realise it doesn’t go anywhere, so you have to turn around and head back – and all that thrashing was for nothing!’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Mildura
‘Focusing on population level outcomes and moving away from the propensity to implement individual behaviour change processes can be difficult. We are working with a multitude of different partners that have a role in the system and constantly lifting our gaze to think about what this means for the population.’ – Program Manager, Healthy Together Knox
‘I think it’s taken time for people to adjust to a systems way of thinking and acting, but we’ve certainly come a long way in the past 18 months!’ – Program Manager, Partnering organisation
Human connections are important. Don’t underestimate them.
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Finally, what is the one piece of advice you would give to others who are adopting a complex systems approach to prevention?Our Healthy Together colleagues had a wealth of advice to offer others – everything from ideas on how to get started, through to ways to manage the work that will be generated. Here are just a few of their suggestions.
‘Be flexible and adaptable. Get comfortable with not knowing everything and planning to the nth degree before launching into action. And start by adding value to existing work and stimulating connections between players within the system.’ – Program Manager, Healthy Together Knox
‘Invest time in setting up “structures” in the system, as they are likely to be sustainable – for example, policies, business unit ways of working, planning guidelines, et cetera.’ – Program Lead, Healthy Together Wyndham
‘Be prepared for constant change and to roll with the punches. Patience. Urgency. Have the patience to understand that systems thinking is an ongoing process and that it takes time. At the same time remember to be agile and responsive to opportunity when it presents and to move swiftly. There are so many opportunities to intervene and it is often surprising which avenue leads to change. Relationships are critical. It is about who you know and who knows who!’ – Coordinator, Healthy Together Latrobe
‘Give it time. It sometimes feels like quite a different way of working so it can take some time to adjust, but the possibilities that the approach generates are endless!’ – Program Manager, Partnering organisation
‘Human connections are important, don’t underestimate them and don’t dismiss them. If obesity prevention was just about the evidence base we would have a much leaner population – it is about people and how we interact with each other and our environment ... thinking systems allows you to work with that complexity. And be prepared to be flexible, working in a complex system requires flexibility. You need to be able to work with flexibility within your team, adapt the way you think about your work and how it fits into the broader picture of prevention, and be prepared to pick things up and drop them just as quickly as the situation requires.’ – Health Promotion Officer, Healthy Together Mildura
www.health.vic.gov.au/prevention/healthytogether If you would like to subscribe/unsubscribe please email [email protected]
To receive this document in an accessible format phone Prevention and Population Health on 9096 9000 or email [email protected] and published by the Victorian Government, 50 Lonsdale St, Melbourne.Except where otherwise indicated, the images in this publication show models and illustrative settings only, and do not necessarily depict actual services, facilities or recipients of services. © Department of Health, 1404019_Healthy Together Victoria Newsletter June 2014.
There is a lot of amazing work happening across Victoria’s prevention system and a lot of health promotion professionals doing what they can to improve the health of Victorians. So tell us about it! • Are you addressing food security in your local area?• Is your local council adapting their policies to encourage greater participation at sporting clubs?• Are your local agencies working together to deliver improved results for your community?Whatever it is, we are all part of the prevention system and all part of creating a healthier Victoria.
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