Health promotion aims to encourage and support individuals, families and communities to have a healthy lifestyle that reduces the risk of illness or disease.
An ideal form of comprehensive primary health care, articulated through the Alma Ata Declaration (1978), includes active health promotion and action on the social determinants of health.
The Indigenous community-controlled primary health care sector has embraced the concept of comprehensive primary health care and health promotion, but re-orienting health services that are based on a medical model is challenging.
Menzies' research applies a systems thinking approach to find ways of better integrating health promotion into primary health care, and to ensure systematic planning, actioning and evaluation of health promotion.
Our research focus:
- To apply continuous quality improvement (CQI) approaches to health promotion in Indigenous health care.
- To enhance the use of evidence-based tools, resources and training in Indigenous health promotion.
Our research impact:
- Through our project 'A structured systems approach to improving health promotion practice for chronic disease prevention in Indigenous communities,' we developed audit and feedback tools suitable for use in Northern Territory Indigenous primary health care services.These tools are now available for use throughout Australia via One21seventy.
- The project demonstrated that there was very little documented health promotion activity occurring in NT primary health care services. Through close engagement with the NT Health Department and the health promotion workforce, a standardised reporting system for health promotion has now been adopted by Health Department services.
Key staff:
- Lyn O’Donoghue
- Alison Laycock.
Collaborators:
- Northern Territory Department of Health
- The Lowitja Institute
- James Cook University
- The University of Melbourne
- La Trobe University.
- Health promotion capacity building: tools, resources and training to strengthen health promotion practice and outcomes
- A structured systems approach to improving health promotion practice for chronic disease prevention in Indigenous communities.