Journal article
What evidence is being used to inform municipal strategic planning for health and wellbeing? Victoria, Australia, a case study
Geoffrey R Browne, Melanie Davern, Billie Giles-Corti
EVIDENCE & POLICY | POLICY PRESS | Published : 2017
Abstract
Victorian local governments (LGs) are required to develop evidence-based Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plans (MPHWPs) that improve health and wellbeing. This study evaluated the implementation of this requirement across 79 LGs. Evidence in 116 documents was categorised by source, issue, and policy specificity. Over 11,000 evidence-occurrences from 200 sources were recorded. More evidence on social determinants was identified than on epidemiology or health behaviours. Most (96%) evidence was descriptive and only 4% supported MPHWP actions. The results suggest the community is an important source of novel interventions, and proposes three related reasons for the dearth of intervention ..
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Awarded by NHMRC
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors thank Helen Jordan from the Centre for Health Policy, University of Melbourne, and Iain Butterworth, Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, who provided comments on the manuscript, as well as the two anonymous peer reviewers who provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. GB is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and scholarship support from the North and West Metro Region of the Department of Health; and BGC by an NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship (#1004900).