Introduction to National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health (NPAPH)
The National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health (NPAPH) was announced by the Council of Australian Government (COAG) on 29 November 2008. The NPAPH will provide $872.1 million over six years from 2009-10. This is the largest investment ever made by an Australian Government in health prevention. It builds on the COAG Australian Better Health Initiative and the National Reform Agenda's Type II Diabetes
Initiative, and supplements the National Health Care Agreement. The NPAPH seeks to address the rising prevalence of lifestyle related chronic disease by laying the foundations for healthy behaviours in the daily lives of Australians through settings such as communities, early childhood education and care environments, schools and workplaces, supported by national social marketing campaigns (MeasureUp and an anti-smoking campaign). A key feature of the NPAPH is the establishment of infrastructure required to monitor and evaluate the progress of interventions. This includes the establishment of a landmark Australian National Preventive Health Agency. The Agency will support the development of evidence and data on the state of preventive health in Australia and the effectiveness of preventative health intervention; and put in place national guidelines and standards to guide preventative
health activities.
The Prevention NP consists of 11 initiatives.
1. Healthy communities
2. Healthy children
3. Healthy workers
4. Industry partnership
5. Social marketing - MeasureUp
6. Social marketing - Tobacco
7. Enabling infrastructure
8. Workforce audit and strategy
9. Australian National Preventative Health Agency and Research Fund
10. Eating disorders collaboration
For example:
Healthy Children ($325.5 million from 2011–12 to 2014–15)
This initiative will provide up to $325.5 million over four years to state and territory governments from July 2011. Funding will be used to deliver programs for children from birth to 16 years of age to increase levels of physical activity and improve the intake of fruit and vegetables in settings such as child care centres, pre-schools and schools. For more information see Healthy Children - Scoping Statement and Guiding Policy Principles (PDF 53 KB)
Healthy Workers ($294.6 million from 2009–10 to 2014–15)
This initiative will provide up to $294.6 million from 2009-10 to support workplace health programs that focus on decreasing rates of overweight and obesity, increasing levels of physical activity and intake of fruit and vegetables, smoking cessation and reducing harmful levels of alcohol consumption. Of this amount, up to $289.4 million will be available to state and territory governments from 1 July 2011 to fund healthy living programs in workplaces.
The remaining $5.2 million is being used by the Commonwealth to develop soft infrastructure to support the implementation of state and territory programs from July 2011. This includes the development of national standards and benchmarking, a National Healthy Workplace Charter and national awards for best practice in workplace health programs. For more information see Healthy Workers - Scoping Statement and Guiding Policy Principles (PDF 56 KB)
For further information go to http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/phd-prevention-np
In each addition of the newsletter CO-OPS will feature what is happening in regards to the NPAPH in one or two states/territories.
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NPAPH - WA
Western Australian Healthy Workers Initiative
The objective of the Western Australian Healthy Workers Initiative (WA HWI) is to contribute to the prevention of chronic disease and overweight and obesity amongst Western Australian workers by addressing four modifiable lifestyle risk factors: poor nutrition, physical inactivity, smoking and harmful alcohol consumption. This will occur by facilitating the delivery of healthy lifestyle interventions targeting these risk factors in or through workplaces. The Western Australian Healthy Workers Initiative is inclusive of the following activities:
a) Activity 1: WA Healthy Workplace Support Service
b) Activity 2: Specialist Service Provider Capacity Building
Activity 1: WA Healthy Workplace Support Service
Overview:
The WA Healthy Workplace Support Service will provide a number of free services that support workplaces across the state to make changes that result in positive lifestyle behaviour changes amongst their employees. Key elements to be delivered by the Support Service will be:
• Tailored practical advice and support available to all workplaces via a range of mechanisms on developing, implementing and evaluating workplace healthy lifestyle interventions.
• Practical tools, resources and guidance materials to support workplaces to implement policies, activities and programs.
• Incentive funding for workplaces in the form of seed funding to ‘kick start’ new workplace health interventions.
• Workforce development and training for workplace staff, health professionals and other stakeholders working with workplaces on best practice approaches and strategies.
• Marketing and communication strategies to reach, motivate and engage workplaces, employees and stakeholders in the initiative.
• Workplace recognition schemes to celebrate workplaces’ successes, increase recognition amongst peers and employees, and encourage and drive continued enhancement of their intervention
Activity 2: Specialist Service Provider Capacity Building
Overview:
As part of its activities, the WA HWI aims to facilitate employee referral to, and participation in, a range of existing, effective specialist healthy lifestyle programs and services in and through workplaces. Through Activity 2, capacity building support will be provided to a number of existing government and non-government specialist service providers to meet the increased demand from workplaces and employees created through the WA HWI. The WA Healthy Workplace Support Service created under Activity 1 will promote and facilitate referral to these specialist services.
Western Australian Healthy Children Program
The objective of the Western Australia Healthy Children Program is to contribute to healthy development and the prevention of chronic disease in children and young people in Western Australia (WA) by addressing overweight and obesity, poor nutrition and physical inactivity. This will be done by implementing a range of programs and activities targeting children and their families in and through key settings. There will be a particular emphasis on reaching those at greatest need and/or risk. The Western Australian Healthy Children Program is inclusive of the following activities:
a) Activity 1: Healthy Children – School Settings
b) Activity 2: Healthy Children – Other Settings
For further information click here
Activity 1: Healthy Children – School Settings
Overview: Activity 1, Healthy Children – School Settings, will deliver a range of healthy eating and physical activity initiatives to children through Western Australian schools across the State. Initiatives will utilise direct program delivery; capacity building; school environmental and policy change; curriculum and teacher support; and parent and community engagement to achieve the desired results.
Key elements will be:
• WA Healthy Schools Project (WAHSP): A comprehensive, state-wide program will promote and facilitate implementation of best practice healthy eating and physical activity initiatives into school policies, structures, programs and environments.
• Crunch&Sip® Program: The state-wide initiative involves certified schools offering students a daily set classroom break to eat fruit or salad vegetables and drink water; parent and student education about benefits of healthy eating; and relevant school policy changes.
• Healthy School Food and Drink Policy: Implementation of the Western Australian Department of Education policy, based on the ‘traffic light’ system of categorising food and drinks. The WA public school policy specifies foods that can be provided through schools and related activities.
• Food and Nutrition Curriculum Support Materials: A suite of curriculum and syllabus support materials focusing on food, healthy eating, nutrition and food preparation skills will be developed for teachers of kindergarten to Year 10.
Activity 2 will deliver a range of initiatives directly to children and adolescents, and indirectly via parents/families and professionals, through a variety of settings in WA:
• Childcare Healthy Lifestyle Scheme: A state-wide scheme to encourage and support family day care and long day care facilities to implement healthy eating and physical activity activities, build supportive environments and establish healthy lifestyle habits in children age 0 to 4 years.
• Parent Support Sessions: Small group sessions offered free to parents of children aged 18 months to 12 years to provide them with the skills, confidence and resources to establish healthier eating and physical activity behaviours among their children.
• “Talking to Parents” Professional Development: Online training to equip professionals with the skills to raise the issue of child obesity with parents of overweight or obese children
• Lifestyle Triple P Program (LPPP): LPPP facilitates the adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviours in families with identified overweight children aged 5 to 10 years by developing parents’ healthy lifestyle-specific content and parenting skills.
• Adolescent Food Literacy Skills Development: A practical hands-on small group-based program to improve adolescents’ practical skills and knowledge related to budgeting, purchasing, storing and preparing/cooking healthy food.
• Healthy Food and Drink Policies in Child Orientated Venues: The project will encourage and support child recreation and entertainment venues to implement structural and policy reforms to increase their provision and marketing of healthy foods/drinks, and decrease these for unhealthy food/drinks.
For further information click here
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An update from the Public Health Evidence & Knowledge Translation research group
An update from the Public Health Evidence & Knowledge Translation research group of the
Brockhoff Child Health & Wellbeing Program, & Cochrane Public Health Group (CPHG) McCaughey centre, Uni of Melbourne
Evidence to your inbox!
HIGHLIGHT: Updated Cochrane systematic evidence review:
Interventions for preventing obesity in children (view full review , Powerpoint, or listen to podcast ).
This review updated and built upon the previous review of the effectiveness of obesity-prevention interventions (first proposed in 1996) – to explore what works, and whether interventions are safe (do not cause harm) and equitable. Studies/evaluations with a comparison group (with or without randomisation), with the minimum intervention duration of 12 weeks, were included. Overall, interventions had a positive impact by reducing children’s risk of developing obesity through policies and strategies to improve healthy eating and physical activity
(PA) levels, and reducing body mass index, relative to a comparison group. Despite the variation, and although not all interventions were found to have an effect, our synthesis of the evidence suggests that the following strategies can be beneficial:
• Including healthy eating, PA and body image in school curricula
• Increasing the number of opportunities for PA and the development of fundamental movement skills each week in children’s settings
• Improving the nutritional quality of food supplied in children’s settings, particularly schools
• Creating environments and cultural practices within settings that support children eating healthier foods and being active throughout each day
• Professional development and capacity building activities which help to support teachers and other staff as they implement health promotion strategies and activities
• Supporting parents to make changes at home that encourage children to be more active, eat more nutritious foods and spend less time in screen-based activities
Reviews, Protocols (reviews under development) and Titles (protocols under development)
Physical activity
• Incentive-based interventions to increase physical activity
• Built environment interventions for physical activity in adults and children
Food Supply/Access
• Nutritional labeling to promote healthier food purchasing and consumption (protocol)
• Interventions addressing gender disparities in family food distribution for improving child nutrition
Workplace
• Workplace-based organisational interventions to prevent and control obesity by improving dietary intake and/or increasing physical activity (protocol)
Systems for Health
• Collaboration between local health and local government agencies for health improvement (full review)
• Interventions by community coalitions in collaborative partnership with local multi-sector public and private organizations for reducing unfavorable health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities
Other NEW research syntheses:
• Effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing screen time in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials http://health-evidence.ca/articles/show/21991
• Primary school interventions to promote fruit and vegetable consumption: A systematic review and meta-analysis http://health-evidence.ca/articles/show/21760
Training and seminars:
• Recently our group facilitated another short-course in Evidence-informed public health & Health promotion in Melbourne, Victoria. The course attracted a range of practitioners and policy officers and was a great success. Further courses are planned for 2012 in regional Victoria and also Sydney.
• Are you interested in attending or hosting a short-course to develop skills and strategies for incorporating evidence into your practice? If so, we would be delighted to hear from you. Contact us via twitter https://twitter.com/#!/CochranePH , our website http://ph.cochrane.org/welcome , or email tpettman@unimelb.edu.au
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Priority Research Centre in Physical Activity & Nutrition
The Priority Research Centre in Physical Activity & Nutrition
at the University of Newcastle takes a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to understanding physical activity and nutrition for population health and sports performance, with particular emphasis on education and health promotion strategies for chronic disease prevention, treatment, and wellbeing.
An example of projects that are currently running follow:
* An obesity prevention intervention for adolescent girls in low-income communities: The Nutrition and Enjoyable Activity for Teen Girls (NEAT Girls) study
* Increasing physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviour to prevent obesity among adolescent boys from disadvantaged schools
* The Supporting Children's Outcomes using Rewards, Exercise and Skills (SCORES) study
* Physical Activity 4 every 1: an evidence-based approach to increasing physical activity levels of adolescents from economically disadvantaged schools
* FamilyFIT: An innovative approach to increasing physical activity for the whole family
* The Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids community program: Promoting family health through using dads and their kids as agents of change
* ‘Healthy Dads Healthy Kids’ for Indigenous families
* The M.A.D.E (Mothers and Daughters Exercising)4 LIFE Pilot Randomised Control Trial: A theory-based physical activity intervention targeting mothers and their daughters
* The Fit-4-Fun Program: Promoting Fitness and Health in Primary School Children
* Development and Evaluation of a Primary School-Based Program to Integrate Physical Activity Across the Curriculum: the E.A.S.Y Minds Program
* Back to BAsics: an after school cooking club for families from low income communities
Contact Prof. Ron Plotnikoff (Director of our PRC) Ron.Plotnikoff@newcastle.edu.au for more information.
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Healthy Communities case study - QLD Phase 2
Ipswich City Council was funded in Phase Two of the Healthy Communities Initiative and is using the Heart Foundation HeartMoves and AustCycle national programs. The city of Ipswich consists of higher than average proportion of disadvantaged groups at risk of developing chronic disease including older adults, people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) origin, migrants with poor English proficiency and
people with disabilities.
The highlight of the project to date has been the Springs Over 50’s Living Villages commitment to the program. This Independent Living Village has over 100 villas and contacted the Council to enquire how they could get involved in the initiative. The village has two HeartMoves Sessions a week and has two groups attending the Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food classes. This Group ranges from 55 years right up to 88 years and are all motivated to age stronger and be active longer.
The next task for Ipswich is attendance at the major shows within the local community to promote healthy living. The Smoothie Bike has arrived and it will be a unique segue for discussion of health guidelines at the major events within Ipswich. Click to read more Candice Wood – Healthy Communities Coordinator cmwood@ipswich.qld.gov.au
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