Health promotion journal of Australia : official journal of Australian Association of Health Promotion Professionals
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Over the last 15 years, a growing body of Australian and international evidence has demonstrated that urban design attributes are associated with a range of health outcomes. For example, the location of employment, shops and services, provision of public and active transport infrastructure and access to open space and recreational opportunities are associated with chronic disease risk factors such as physical activity levels, access to healthy food, social connectedness, and air quality. Despite the growing knowledge base, this evidence is not being consistently translated into urban planning policy and practice in Australia. ⋯ It argues that health promotion practitioners and researchers need to more closely engage with urban planning practitioners, policymakers and researchers to encourage the creation of healthy urban environments through integrated transport, land use and infrastructure planning. There is also a need for innovative research to evaluate the effectiveness of policy options. This would help evidence to be more effectively translated into policy and practice, making Australia a leader in planning healthy communities.
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Health Promot J Austr · Apr 2014
Mobilisation, politics, investment and constant adaptation: lessons from the Australian health-promotion response to HIV.
The Australian response to HIV oversaw one of the most rapid and sustained changes in community behaviour in Australia's health-promotion history. The combined action of communities of gay men, sex workers, people who inject drugs, people living with HIV and clinicians working in partnership with government, public health and research has been recognised for many years as highly successful in minimising the HIV epidemic. ⋯ The experience of the response to HIV, including its successes and failures, has lessons applicable across health promotion. This includes the need to harness community mobilisation and action; sustain participation, investment and leadership across the partnership; commit to social, political and structural approaches; and build and use evidence from multiple sources to continuously adapt and evolve. So what? The Australian HIV response was one of the first health issues to have the Ottawa Charter embedded from the beginning, and has many lessons to offer broader health promotion and common challenges. As a profession and a movement, health promotion needs to engage with the interactions and synergies across the promotion of health, learn from our evidence, and resist the siloing of our responses.