In July 2023, the Australian Government welcomed consultation submissions on the draft National Consumer Engagement Strategy for Health and Wellbeing.
This strategy strives to achieve priorities to strength partnerships between health policy-makers and the community, as outlined in the National Preventative Health Strategy 2021-2030.
AHPA provided a response which invited views and reccommendations on the strategy’s purpose and application; see the consultation website here.
Recommendations from AHPA included the following:
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Strengthen the purpose statement by clearly defining ‘how’ and reflecting the onus on the policy maker to develop systems and approaches that support engagement.
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Revisit the term 'consumer' and potentially extend to recognise that health is more than an outcome of service delivery.
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Changing the language so that the onus is shifted from the individual. For example, shifting from ‘hard to reach and ‘hard to engage’ to ‘hardly engaged’ and ‘hardly reached’.
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More details on the practicalities and barriers on how the user can operationalise the consumer engagement approach and implement this into health systems where policy is developed.
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Inclusion of concepts including Health in All Policies, principles from the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and the Social and Structural Determinants of Health, especially economic wellbeing.
The submission was drafted by Belinda Lunnay, Melinda Edmundson, Gemma Crawford, David Towl, Kym Strachan, Emma Bruce, Hannah Wechkunanunkul, Gabi Martinez, Fiona Read.
Read AHPA’s submission in full here.
