Sophie Yates, Australian National University
COVID-19 is not only a health, social and economic problem - it is an environmental problem.
Fiona Armstrong (Climate and Health Alliance), Anthony Capon (Monash Sustainable Development Institute) and Ro McFarlane (University of Canberra) explain why biodiversity conservation and mitigating climate change are crucial to preventing future pandemics.
Read MoreIn today’s post, Abigail Lewis @AbigailLLew flags unanswered questions about Australia’s temporary visa system in the current health crisis, the essential work being done by temporary visa holders in response to COVID-19, and the importance of policy flexibility and care for people in limbo during a pandemic that crosses borders. Abigail is a Research Associate and Communications Manager at public policy think tank Per Capita.
Read MoreIn this podcast created and originally published by ANU’s Policy Forum Pod, Martyn Pearce talks to Professor Luis Salvador-Carulla and Dr Sebastian Rosenberg about how to care for mental health during an unprecedented period of community isolation due to COVID-19. If you or anyone you know needs help on that front, contact details for support services are listed at the end of this post.
Read More2020 has been no ordinary year. Still reeling from the destruction of the bushfires Australians are now having to adjust to also dealing with a global pandemic. In today’s blog post Dr Laura Davey gives her personal reflections on what it has been like to live through these unprecedented times at the same time as becoming a mother for the first time.
Read MoreCovid19 is creating massive employment upheavals with significant implications for peoples’ mental health. In today’s blog Post Aurora Elmes discusses the role social enterprises can play in providing flexible and supportive workplaces for vulnerable people and the need for government to consider how they can support these businesses to help cushion some of the economic and social fallout from Covid-19.
Read MoreThere is a very real fear that Covid-19 will have a worse impact on people with disability and yet, as Professor Helen Dickinson discusses in today’s blog post, they are being left out of the Government’s response.
Read MoreIn today’s post, Dr Kathryn Snow methodically and clearly addresses some key questions about COVID-19. Dr Snow is a health services researcher and epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and collaborates with clinicians, health authorities, and qualitative researchers to improve health services for vulnerable groups. This post was originally published on her blog.
Read MoreLeading health and disability researchers in Australia are calling for urgent action from State and Federal governments to develop a targeted response to COVID-19 for people with disability, their families and the disability service sector. In this post originally published by Croakey, Professor Anne Kavanagh from the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor Gemma Carey from UNSW flag risks facing people with disability in this rapidly shifting environment and set out recommendations for government to mitigate those risks.
Read MoreWhen 60 Minutes aired a segment called ‘Does Australia really want to see the end of Down syndrome?’ in August 2017, its Facebook platform was flooded with negative comments about people with Down syndrome and their parents. Belinda Johnson and Dr Raelene West from RMIT University examined the online responses to the program and uncovered confronting views of Down syndrome as an economic burden, a medical burden and a social burden. As they worked their way through comments questioning the right of children with Down syndrome to access publicly funded disability services in light of advances in prenatal testing, for example, the authors began to question the extent to which derogatory and ill-informed comments that push people with disabilities into an exhausting and endless process of justifying their existence should be tolerated in the name of free speech. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Sociology.
Read MoreMy experiences as a ‘job seeker’ reinforce the view that jobactive should be shut down. I chose the jobactive provider because I had heard its senior managers boasting about the skills of their staff. To keep things fair, I told the workers I met about my knowledge of employment services and that I was taking notes of every appointment. These notes were so I could check what they told me to do was technically correct in relation to the guidelines and Social Security Act. Here’s a short account of what happened in the 4 months I was job seeker.
Read MoreThe accelerating pace of urbanisation globally has generated new anxieties about our relationship with and experience of cities. In this piece Jessica Pykett discusses how to start designing policy strategies for urban wellbeing.
Urban challenges such as traffic, air pollution, noise, stress, overcrowding, socio-economic inequalities, food insecurity, excessive waste, ill-health, exclusion, conflict, privatisation of space and impacts of extreme weather, biodiversity loss and the climate crisis are some of the many concerns which urban policy makers are asked to address. In 2018 at a summit of the World Health Organization’s European Healthy Cities Network in Copenhagen, Denmark, hundreds of Mayors committed to taking action on health, wellbeing and happiness in cities.
Read MoreThe Closing the Gap Report 2020 was released the week before last by the Prime Minister. He frankly admitted ‘The final target — closing the gap in life expectancy within a generation — is not on track to be met by 2031’. Then he went on ‘We may not be on track to fully close the life expectancy gap in a generation – always an ambitious target – but mortality rates have improved by almost 10 per cent. This is mostly because we’ve made progress in tackling the leading cause of death: the big circulatory diseases like heart disease and stroke. This is progress.’ In this piece, Richard Madden and John Gilroy of the University of Sydney analyse the implications of this report and the statements made.
Read MoreSuicide is a major challenge for public health. Approximately 800,000 people die by suicide every year worldwide; that is one every 40 seconds. The impact on those left behind is profound and long-lasting. It is estimated that for every death by suicide approximately 135 people are affected. In this post, Dr Maria Michail reflects on the importance of understanding the complexity of suicide and suicidal behaviour.
Read MoreGerry Hamill from UK NGO First Time Inside helps new prisoners prepare for incarceration through ‘rehabilitation’. In this blog, Gerry reflects on the uses and abuses of people with ‘lived experience’ in the social service sector.
Read MoreWhile managing the archives for Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand (@GoodShepANZ), Fraser Faithfull keeps a close eye on the impact of government policies for disadvantaged women, children and families. Today he shares a review of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Homelessness, the challenges for the sector in Gippsland, and innovative responses that could support larger policy reforms.
Read MoreWe need to provide much better health services to people leaving prison. Epidemiologist Dr Kathryn Snow (University of Melbourne and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute) explains why the “good luck system” for prison leavers doesn’t make sense from either a financial or a human rights perspective.
Read MoreIntimate Partner Homicide (IPH) is a serious social and criminal justice issue and statistics suggest the problem is increasing. This puts serious pressure on those who respond to domestic abuse, coercive control, and intimate partner stalking, to be able to confidently assess the risk, or spot risk escalation. In this blog Dr Jane Monckton Smith discusses her research tracking intimate partner homicide risk escalation.
Read MoreGeneral practice in the United Kingdom has long had an international reputation as a positive exemplar of primary care. Free at the point of access, funded on basis of population and needs (i.e. not a fee for service), and led by clinicians, our model is seen to have a better chance than most of providing the support that is preventative, coordinated, and with continuity of care. In this post, Professor Robin Miller considers how over recent years, it has become apparent that our traditional model will struggle with expected demographic changes such as an ageing population, the rise of obesity, and increasing people living with multiple long-term conditions. These combined pressures are indeed leading to frustration for patients in relation to accessing appointments, and considerable stress for general practice.
Read MoreEURIPIDES is the short title for Evaluating the Use of Patient Experience Data to Improve the Quality of Inpatient Mental Health Care study. EURIPIDES aimed to understand which of the many different approaches to collecting and using patient experience data are the most useful for supporting improvements in inpatient mental health care.
Researchers from the EURIPIDES study team have made a series of recommendations for improving the way that NHS mental health trusts collect and use patient feedback to improve the quality of care for mental health inpatients. In this post, Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton summarises some of the key findings ahead of the full report being published in early 2020 as health research academics call for NHS to act on mental health patient feedback.
Read MoreKanika Samuels-Wortley, scholar at the University of Waterloo, reveals stories of police violence and prejudice towards Indigenous and Black populations, and explains why understanding these experiences is critical for justice and equity.
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