The 2022 Victorian election campaign is bereft of long-term thinking because the major parties are again focussing solely on funding hospital beds instead of preventing people from needing to use them, an alliance of public health organisations says.
The state election campaign by the Public Health Association of Australia Victoria Branch (PHAA), the Australian Health Promotion Association VIC/TAS (AHPA), and the Australasian Epidemiological Association emphasises six areas that, if funded and acted on, will make people in Victoria healthier.
"Roughly one in two people live with a preventable disease, which affects our collective health and wellbeing as Victorians," says PHAA VIC Branch President, Mariam Hachem.
"While a new hospital is an important announcement, the current pressures of the acute care system on patients, staff and the ambulance service show that more needs to be done about prevention, to alleviate these pressures, and avoid the need for hospitalisation.
"Reorienting the health system towards prevention means a return on investment of $14 for every $1 spent on public health initiatives, and also boosts community health and wellbeing."
APHA's David Towl said investing in health promotion and prevention today will halt future health system crises.
"We don't fix a broken health system, by doing more of the same – building beds to put sick people in," he said.
"Let's realistically fund evidence-based health promotion and prevention activity to keep people from getting sick in the first place."
The six public health priorities of the Vote For Public Health Victoria election campaign are:
- Invest 5% of total health spending on preventive health
- Create Local Public Health Units, funded for five years
- Develop a VIC Public Health Officer training program
- Invest 5% of total mental health spending on prevention by 2030
- Support Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations
- Establish a state-based Victorian Sustainability Health Unit
The alliance's campaign site, VoteForPublicHealth.com, also features a scorecard which assesses Labor's, the Liberal National coalition's and Greens' platforms against the six priorities.
