Yesterday I joined more than forty people at a workshop that explored a question that has haunted my professional life for the better part of two decades: how do we move health impact assessment (HIA) from episodic enthusiasm to genuine, ongoing practice?

The Wellbeing for Future Generations: Lessons from Wales and Building HIA Capacity in Australia workshop was jointly organised by the Cities Institute and the International Centre for Future Health Systems at the University of New South Wales, and was convened by A/Prof Fiona Haigh and Dr Jinhee Kim. It focused on the lessons from Wales' remarkable journey toward legislating HIA, combined with reflections from Australian practitioners about how they’ve navigated the changing use of HIA in Australia. What emerged, for me, wasn't just a comparison of two countries, but a deeper conversation about time, fear, and the architecture of institutional change.

This matters because decisions about transport infrastructure, housing developments, planning, and social programs all shape (costly) health outcomes, but health considerations remain marginal in these processes.

The tide turns

There's a palpable sense that interest in HIA is having a resurgance in Australia. After pioneering work in the early 2000s, Australia’s HIA use gave way to what Fiona today described as "fragmented and champion-driven" activity.

However we're seeing renewed momentum. EPA Victoria is doing focused work on HIA, the enHealth guidelines are being updated, conversations about integration with planning are occurring in different jurisdictions, there seems to be increased receptiveness from local government to consider wellbeing and health across a range of activities.

The tide seems to be coming back in.

But tides are cyclical. The crucial question isn't whether we're experiencing renewed interest; it's whether we can institutionalise approaches that persist after champions move on, when political priorities shift, or when the next public health crisis demands attention.

This is where Wales has done so well but also gives us plenty of insights, not as a template to copy, but as a case study in patient institution-building.

Eight years: playing the long game

Professor Liz Green's keynote traced Wales' path from the Well-being of Future Generations Act to the statutory HIA requirements coming into force in April 2027, which is described in more detail on the Wales Health Impact Assessment Support Unit website.

One detail from Liz’s talk stood out: it took eight years from focused advocacy to the legislation being enacted.

This temporal dimension matters profoundly, but sits uncomfortably with the rhythms that drive most of our work. Media cycles operate in days. Political attention spans in weeks or months. Electoral cycles in three to four years. Research funding rounds in annual competitions. But meaningful institutional change, the kind that shifts how organisations and systems routinely operate, moves on different timescales.

Wales has embedded long-term thinking as one of its five ways of working within the Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015). This detail matters. The recognition that sustainable development, health equity, and genuine stakeholder participation require longer-term horizons is baked into how the Welsh Assembly sees its role, and sees itself as distinct. The question for Australia is can we sustain advocacy and capacity-building efforts across timeframes that outlast individual politicians, program managers, or funding cycles?

Fear, trust, and the culture challenge

Perhaps the most important observation from the presentations and panel discussion was about fear. Fear of scrutiny. Fear of loss of control. Fear that HIA will slow decision-making, expose uncomfortable truths, or empower communities to challenge projects that authorities have already decided. The panel, made up of Liz, Fiona, Jinhee, Kelly Andrews from Healthy Cities Australia, and Dr Emma Quinn from the NSW Ministry of Health, had a wide-ranging discussion. One idea that was suggested was that legislation can counter this emotional, fear-driven response by creating statutory obligations that override individual reluctance.

I’m unsure about this. Does legislation alone ever really change culture, or do people find ways to subvert intent while technically complying? The Welsh model includes transparency requirements, publication obligations, and potential for judicial review—mechanisms designed to make perfunctory compliance more difficult. Yet even with these safeguards, there's recognition that building genuine commitment requires action beyond legal mandates.

This is where recent work applying implementation science frameworks to HIA may be relevant. An international team led by Dr Tara Kenny and Dr Monica O’Mullane from University College Cork (disclosure: including me!) used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to map barriers and facilitators to HIA’s adoption across five domains:

• the innovation itself (HIA as a method),
• outer setting (political and policy context),
• inner setting (organisational capacity),
• individuals (knowledge and attitudes), and
• process (how implementation unfolds).

What implementation science might add

The Kenny et al. review synthesises evidence from 45 studies, revealing patterns that could inform a revamped Australian approach to HIA’s use. Three findings stand out for me.

The first thing is that the early stages of HIA, screening and scoping, are critical not just for technical and procedural reasons, but because this is when critical decisions get made about whose voices matter, what impacts get attention, and how equity will be focused on. The paper suggests that "HIA implementation that encapsulates HIA’s core values of equity and participation require attention at the earlier stages of the HIA and may be difficult to retrofit post scoping." This has pretty far-reaching implications: if we're still serious about participatory, equity-focused HIA, we need to resource and scaffold these early phases differently.

The second issue is that capacity challenges operate across multiple levels and domains simultaneously. It's not just about training individuals to conduct HIAs, or even about developing organisational resources and in-house infrastructure. It's about supportive policy environments, intersectoral partnerships, access to data, alignment with existing impact and policy assessment processes, and broader public health advocacy that creates awareness of the broader determinants of health. The review identifies strategies spanning all five CFIR domains, from clarifying HIA's relative advantage over other assessment tools, to building networks and partnerships, to ensuring adequate funding and dedicated staff.

Third and most fundamentally, the review concludes that “building wider HIA support, awareness, and capacity essential to progressing HIA is dependent on wider public health advocacy and addressing challenges specific to HIA as a method and tool.” In essence, HIA institutionalisation isn't a narrow technical project. It’s embedded within broader efforts to advance Health in All Policies approaches, strengthening understanding of the determinants of health and wellbeing, and shifting how we make decisions about policies, programs, and projects that shape population health.

No wonder it’s been difficult. It involves far more complexity than most simple “innovations”. Yet the alternative, where we continue to make decisions that deliberately or inadvertently exacerbate health inequities, carries its own costs These costs remain largely invisible because we don't systematically assess them and don’t hold people to account for them.

Toward adaptive institutionalisation?

At the end of the workshop, and thinking about Tara’s paper on HIA and implementation science, I came up with an idea I want to explore further: a model of adaptive institutionalisation for HIA in Australia.

Rather than pursuing a single pathway, whether that's a mandate, capacity building, or voluntary adoption (and HIA has always taken heterogeneous forms), what I’m calling an adaptive institutionalisation approach would recognise that different strategies suit different contexts and phases of readiness. This approach acknowledges that political windows of opportunity are unpredictable but can be prepared for. It focuses on capacity building strategies that work with, rather than against, political cycles and extant institutional cultures.

Thinking about CFIR's process domain, this might involve:

Assessing context before acting

Rather than simply following the stepwise HIA procedures uncritically and unconsciously, there may be value in systematically appraising where support and momentum already exists within different contexts, what potential champions already exist and how they could be linked to the HIA process, how HIA timing could align with decision making processes (and how the HIA could be tweaked if it doesn’t align), and what broader policy opportunities could be leveraged. Many experienced HIA practitioners do these things routinely (often due to past failures and errors) but they need to be signposted, made explicit, and acknowledged in HIA guidance.

Staged implementation that matches readiness

Different jurisdictions, sectors, and decision-making contexts sit at different points along the HIA implementation journey. Some might be ready for integration with existing assessment processes. Others need much more foundational awareness-raising of enabling concepts. Others still might benefit from demonstrations of HIA internally that build trust and show practical value. We’ve had to do all of these at different times in New South Wales, but the approach has often been tacitly (and tactically) adaptive rather than guided by a framework.

Attending to timeframes

We need to focus on multi-year strategies that might survive electoral and funding cycles, while also identifying a few short-term wins that build momentum and demonstrate value. Timing and timeliness has been a recurrent theme in HIA effectiveness research. Wales' eight-year journey (within its even longer twenty year journey) suggests we need patient institution-building alongside responsive opportunism. We’ve been doing this within the HIA field, but sometimes not owning up to it explicitly or publicly.

Building trust

Tara’s review emphasises transparency throughout the HIA process, rigorous methodology, and clear documentation of decision-making as essential for building trust in HIA as a process and practice. This matters because it's the foundation for addressing the fear and resistance issues mentioned above that legislation alone can’t overcome.

Conceiving of HIA capacity as part of broader health equity infrastructure

Re-connecting HIA existing health equity initiatives, Health in All Policies approaches, Healthy Cities networks, and cross-sectoral partnerships. This is being done anyway, but it can leverage existing action and make sure that health promotion remains at the heart of HIA along with health protection.

What this means in practice

For those of us working on HIA in Australia, I’ve been reflecting on yesterday’s workshop and I think there are several implications:

1. We need to get serious about the early stages of HIA (screening and scoping), recognising these as moments where equity and participation get embedded or excluded.
2. We need to map the Australian landscape more systematically. Where is momentum building? What existing assessment and planning processes might HIA enhance or complement? Where do champions exist, and what support do they need? Which policy windows are opening, and how can we prepare to move when they do? (I feel like this is constantly changing, so knowledge that’s derived ad hoc gets out of date quickly)
3. We need to develop and revamp resources and guidance that support context-sensitive adaptation rather than prescriptive standardisation of HIA processes.
4. We should document and share both successes and challenges more systematically. The evidence base for HIA effectiveness in Australia is relatively good, but we still need honest and public reporting about what didn't work and why, not just spin or examples we’d like to showcase.
5. We need to (re)connect HIA advocacy and capacity-building with broader public health movements in Australia for health equity, sustainable development, and participatory governance. HIA isn't an end in itself, it's a way to get to better decisions that protect and promote population health and equity.

The question we left with

As I was facilitating the panel discussion towards the end of the workshop, I posed a thought experiment: imagine we reconvened in three years to find HIA genuinely reinvigorated in Australia, with more widespread use, demonstrable impacts on health equity, energy and momentum. What would have happened to get us there?

The answers pointed toward both top-down enablers (policy frameworks, funding, legislation) and bottom-up drivers (community demand, practitioner networks, demonstrated value for different sectors). The discussion also mentioned the need for both quick wins (showing value and responsiveness) and more slow, patient institution building (developing sustainable infrastructure).

I'd add one more element to what was discussed, drawn from our conversation about time and Wales' experience. We need to have realistic expectations about the temporal rhythms of institutional change. Eight years from advocacy to legislation. Twelve years before that to build capacity, develop guidance, train practitioners, and shift organisational cultures.

This doesn't mean twenty years of waiting. It means strategic, sustained effort across multiple fronts and building on the work that’s already been done over decades in Australia to further develop capacity, seize opportunities, create demand, (continuing to) demonstrate value, form and expand partnerships, shift narratives, and yes, when circumstances align, pursuing legislation and regulatory frameworks.

The tide may be coming in, but tides don't build seawalls (to torture a metaphor). We still need intention, resources, coordination, and time.

The question is whether we're prepared for the long work of adaptive institutionalisation. If we can be patient enough for the timeframes involved, strategic enough to work across multiple levels and domains, and committed enough to sustain effort when the returns won’t be immediately evident.

Wales shows it's possible. Implementation science may give us ways of formalising and describing the hard work of institutionalising HIA that’s already been undertaken. In Australia there are still meaningful challenges and opportunities. What happens next depends on whether we can translate enthusiasm into the kind of sustained (generational?), multilevel effort that genuine institutionalisation will require.

Thanks

Many thanks to all participants at the 1 December workshop participants, particularly Liz Green for sharing Wales' experience, and to the panelists Kelly Andrews (Healthy Cities Australia), Dr Emma Quinn (NSW Ministry of Health), A/Prof Fiona Haigh (UNSW International Centre for Future Health Systems), and Dr Jinhee Kim (UNSW Cities Institute) for their insights. The workshop was jointly organised by the Cities Institute and the International Centre for Future Health Systems.

References

CFIR Research Team. (2025). The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. Center for Clinical Management Research. https://cfirguide.org

Kenny, T., Harris-Roxas, B., McHugh, S., Douglas, M., Green, L., Haigh, F., Purdy, J., Kavanagh, P., & O’Mullane, M. (2025). Routemap for health impact assessment implementation: Scoping review using the consolidated framework for implementation research. Health Promotion International, 40(3), daaf080. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daaf080

This post first appeared on the Harris-Roxas Health blog.

Fighting against the segregation of people with disabilities, giving a more meaningful voice to people with disabilities, and making sure the NDIS doesn’t become a (more) broken funding model. These were some of the issues discussed during a fascinating panel discussion last night that was organised by the UNSW Disability Innovation Institute to mark the International Day of People with Disability.

The discussion explored what progress has been made in the fifteen years since the adoption of the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – or lack thereof. The panel included June Riemer, Dr Alastair McEwin, Rosemary Kayess, Fiona Mckenzie and Prof Julian Trollor, and was facilitated by Nas Campanella.

The CPRD played a major role in shifting the perception of people with disabilities from the subjects of medical treatment and charity, to full members of society with human rights.

One of the strongest themes from the discussion was the need to normalise and support people with disabilities to participate in all aspects of life and to end segregation. The content of the Convention remains relevant – and a lot of it remains unrealised:

The purpose of the present Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.

UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Article 1

As the incoming Disability Discrimination Commissioner Rosemary Kayess summarised, “we’ve got to stop focusing on the diagnosis and start focusing on the processes to support people to participate… Let’s stop with the catchphrases and talk about disability like grown-ups.”

On Friday I had the privilege of attending a forum Celebrating the Whitlam Community Health Program: Lessons for the Future and participating on a panel at the Whitlam Institute.

The forum was the culmination of an ARC-funded Project looking at Contemporary lessons from a history of Aboriginal, women’s and generalist community health services in Australia 1970-2020, which involved more than a dozen investigators from nine universities and partner organisations.

The Community Health Program

The Community Health Program was established in 1973 and within three years it had funded over 700 projects, including community health centres, Aboriginal medical services, and women’s health centres.

Communities must look beyond the person who is sick in bed or who needs medical attention. The (Hospitals and Health Services) Commission will be concerned with more than just hospital services. The concept and financial support will extend to the development of community-based health services and the sponsoring of preventive health programs. 

Even though the program was gouged by later governments many of the services funded still exist. For example I’ve worked with the Liverpool Women’s Health Centre this year, which was founded by a collective in 1975 and funded through the CHP.

The vision of the CHP remains relevant today: ensuring that people can have access to relevant,meaningful multidisciplinary care in the community. When the CHP was conceived in the early ’70s it sought to meet the preventive care needs, to address inequalities, to reduce demands on hospital emergency departments, and tackle rising rates of chronic disease – issues which we have gone backwards on since.

The presentations and panel discussions highlighted that while the community health sector remains dynamic, Commonwealth engagement with the sector has been erratic. There’s a need to return governance to communities, reduce the variability in services offered by community health between states and regions, and to return to block funding rather than project funding. Primary Health Networks are well placed to tackle these issues, and to foster the kind of resilient local service systems that we’ll need to address environmental, social and economic shocks in the near future.

Thanks to all involved for a very thought-provoking afternoon.

Project team

Researcher and Project Manager

Dr. Connie Musolino, University of Adelaide.

Chief Investigators

• Professor Fran Baum AO, Stretton Health Equity, University of Adelaide.
• Associate Professor Tamara Mackean, Flinders University.
• Professor Warwick Anderson, The University of Sydney.
• Emeritus Professor Colin MacDougall, Flinders University.
• Professor Virginia Lewis, La Trobe University.
• Associate Professor David Legge, La Trobe University.
• Dr. Toby Freeman, University of Adelaide. 

Partner Investigators

• Patricia Turner AM, CEO of the National Aboriginal Community ControlledHealth Organisation (NACCHO).
• Denise Fry, Sydney Local Health District.
• Paul Laris, Paul Laris and Associates.
• Tony McBride, Tony McBride & Associates.
• Jennifer Macmillan, La Trobe University.

Researchers and Students

• Dr. Helen van Eyk, University of Adelaide.
• Dr. James Dunk, The University of Sydney.
• Abdullah Sheriffdeen, Flinders University.
• Jacob Wilson, Flinders University.

Even though many aged care services don’t provide the care that older people and carers need and want, some do it much better than others. Why?

That’s the question colleagues from WSU, UNSW, SESLHD, SWSLHD, RCSI and I explored in an open access article that explores these questions, led by Associate Professor Ann Dadich.

Rather than focusing on the substantial and systemic problems facing aged care, this study examined brilliant aged care — practices that exceeded expectation.

There are many insights into what can lead to brilliant aged care, which can be broadly categorised into:

• deep understanding of the older person
• more than a job
• innovative practices
• permission to reprioritise.

Some of the best insights came from the artefacts that people were asked to bring to the interview, which were items (e.g. photos, items, artworks or other objects) that reflected brilliant aged care for them. These artefacts opened up new lines of discussion and new ideas, for example:

“people in the late stages of dementia are like an oyster, one of the ugliest, kind of gnarled shells you could possibly think of. There are so many beautiful shells in the world. The oyster isn’t one of them and yet when you open it up, it has this extraordinary little pearl inside it and that’s what we need to find in every older person. Every older person, no matter … what their state of health or wellbeing, still has that pearl that is that beautiful human being inside them and it’s our job, not their job, it’s our job to open that up and find that pearl.” (Grace)

There’s a lot more in the open access article – take a look.

Dadich, A., Kearns, R., Harris-Roxas, B., Ni Chroinin, D., Boydell, K., Ní Shé, É., Lim, D., Gonski, P., & Kohler, F. (2023). What constitutes brilliant aged care? A qualitative study of practices that exceed expectation. Journal of Clinical Nursing, online first. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.16789

I read a useful post by Erin Kissane, where they asked people on Bluesky about what their negative experiences of Mastodon had been. I recommend you read it.

The main issues reported by people were that:

• they got scolded, usually for failing to use content warnings
• that they couldn't discover or easily search for people to follow
• it's confusing to have multiple instances
• it's too serious
• people are being denied features like reposts in the name of safety, rather than being treated by adults.

Separate to Erin's work, I asked a similar question on Bluesky last week and received a much smaller, but consistent set of responses.

We should take these issues seriously. Mastodon should continue to aspire to be a safe place, in particular people who are marginalised on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, disability and poverty. Many of the complaints identified by Erin are, at least in part, reflective of deep concerns about the safety of users that have guided the development of the platform.

However we have to acknowledge that people have been driven off. Many of those who've gone would make Mastodon a richer, more diverse and more interesting place. I changed instances last week and in the process I unfollowed several hundred accounts that I used to interact with, but who haven't posted for at least six months. I miss a lot of these people and we shouldn't callously dismiss their departure.

Perhaps we need to chart a middle path between safety and approachability.

The way we make and keep Mastodon, and the fediverse more generally, safe is by not tolerating bad faith nonsense. Agonising over this is a weakness that villains exploit, and which has systematically ruined corporate social media (though their owners have done a good job of ruining that all on their own).

I confess that I get frustrated with complaints about content warnings (CWs). Nobody has a right to my eyeballs or my thoughts. Screaming into the void is one thing, but you don't have the right to pour your negative emotional state into my brain.

The caveat to this, and it's a critical one, is that many people of colour and trans people have said that they've been lectured to use content warnings when complaining about the people, structures and processes that oppress them (Often referred to as a home owners association – or HOA – mindset. HOAs are themselves a U.S. term, so its usefulness as shorthand is pretty limited).

We have to believe these people. Their experiences are real and their perspectives are legitimate. The need to listen to these people precisely the we can't allow this variation of bad-faith sealioning to proliferate, and for CW scolding to be weaponised.

Again this speaks to the need for a middle path between safety and approachability.

Similarly, maybe people on the fediverse should throttle back on “you need to” posts if someone doesn't use a CW or include alt-text on an image. I like those norms, they actually help inclusivity, but they're possibly at the expense of being welcoming and allowing people to make good-faith mistakes.

None of these issues are resolved by technical affordances. A repost button that allows to dunk on other people would be neither more welcoming nor safer.

The middle path between safety and approachability will be charted by how we act.

Ben Harris-Roxas Website | Publications | Mastodon

I guest edited a special issue of the Australian Journal of Primary Health with Dr Liz Sturgiss that reflects on more than 50 years of the Inverse Care Law.

The Inverse Care Law was first coined by Julian Tudor Hart in 1972 to refer to availability of good medical and social care varying inversely with the needs of the population served .

As we note in the editorial:

…we cannot forget the importance of income inequality as one of the primary manifestations of disadvantage. Poverty remains one of the principal determinants of how the inverse care law plays out in primary health care and it is a cross-cutting issue that affects all disadvantaged groups to varying degrees. All approaches to improve the access to primary care would benefit from specific attention to how the needs of those living in poverty are served.

The special issue includes a range of articles on the Inverse Care Law itself, Aboriginal and First Nations health, care for transgender people, access for people from culturally diverse backgrounds, and general practice. Most are open access – please take a look.

References

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Harris-Roxas, B., & Sturgiss, E. (2023). Equity in primary health care provision: more than 50 years of the inverse care law. Australian Journal of Primary Health, 29(2), i–ii. https://doi.org/10.1071/PY23062

Tudor Hart, J. (1971). The inverse care law. The Lancet, 7696, 405–412.

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November 3, 2022

My friend comes uninvited

It comes instead when I am fighting not an open but a guerrilla war with my own life, during weeks of small household confusions, lost laundry, unhappy help, canceled appointments, on days when the telephone rings too much and I get no work done and the wind is coming up. On days like that my friend comes uninvited. (Joan Didion, 1979)

It's hard for me to remember a time before migraine. My first one was when I was thirteen, after a day of what I later came to recognise as prodrome and aura followed by disembodied but all-consuming pain.

Everyone's migraine is different, but that doesn't stop people from recommending treatments based on their own experiences. My migraine is known as “classic migraine” or migraine with aura. I see see points of colour, become sensitive to light, get confused, and start speaking gibberish. This is known as “word salad”, which doesn't really do justice to the sensation of one's mind being unable to select the right word, of being decoupled from the ability to use language.

Migraine is the second most common cause of disability, after back pain (Steiner et al., 2020). Its causes remain elusive, though it seems likely that it's a collection of neurological and neurovascular disorders. I think (hope?) it will always be somewhat unknowable. For a while my brain doesn't work and I'm incapacitated, and then it passes. It feels like something that can't be fully known.

I've become better at managing my migraine over the years, which is simply to say that I've become better at recognising the early signs. I've tried drugs, but the trade-offs stack up quickly. Weighing up side effects and the risk of migraine changes when it's been months or, once, years since my last migraine.

I had a bad one yesterday, my worst in quite a while. I'm still fuzzy and depleted.

People who experience tinnitus are often advised to undertake cognitive restructuring, to think of tinnitus as a friend who's always with them (Fuller et al., 2020). I don't think I'll ever be able to think of migraine as anything other than a tormentor.

If there is a good aspect of migraine it's in its passing. Nausea intensifies, and for me, suddenly, relief. The weight is removed. Light becomes less harsh. Colours change. Language returns.

Sources

Didion, J. (1979). The White Album. Simon & Schuster.

Fuller, T., Cima, R., Langguth, B., Mazurek, B., Vlaeyen, J. W., & Hoare, D. J. (2020). Cognitive behavioural therapy for tinnitus. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012614.pub2

Steiner, T. J., Stovner, L. J., Jensen, R., Uluduz, D., Katsarava, Z., on behalf of Lifting The Burden: the Global Campaign against Headache. (2020). Migraine remains second among the world’s causes of disability, and first among young women: findings from GBD2019. The Journal of Headache and Pain, 21(1), 137. https://doi.org/10.1186/s10194-020-01208-0

Ben Harris-Roxas Website | Publications | Mastodon

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February 24, 2022

Evaluation of ‘Shisha No Thanks’ – a co-design social marketing campaign on the harms of waterpipe smoking

An important paper from our Shisha No Thanks! project, led by Lilian Chan, has been published:

This is one of the first published evaluations of a health promotion intervention targeting young people to address the growing global trend of waterpipe smoking. It makes a timely and important contribution that demonstrates that co-design social marketing campaigns can raise awareness of messages about the harms of water pipe smoking among young people of Arabic speaking background. 

It’s open access and free to access.

References

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Chan, L., El-Haddad, N., Freeman, B., MacKenzie, R., Woodland, L., O’Hara, B. J., & Harris-Roxas, B. F. (2022). Evaluation of ‘Shisha No Thanks’ – a co-design social marketing campaign on the harms of waterpipe smoking. BMC Public Health, 22(1), 386. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12792-y

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January 26, 2022

“The availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served” – Submit your article to our special issue marking fifty years of the inverse care law

Dr Liz Sturgiss and I are guest editing a special issue of the Australian Journal of Primary Health on “Equity in Primary Health Care Provision: More than 50 years of the Inverse Care Law”.

The special issue will cover a range of topics, including:

• Comprehensive primary health care for specific populations, including
  – prison populations
  – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and First Nations
  – culturally and linguistically diverse communities
  – people living in poverty
  – populations experiencing homelessness and unhoused people
  – rural and remote health.
• Models of care and health services research.
• Team based care and exploration of scope of practice.
• Policy innovations and funding models.
• Community-based responses to the needs of marginalised and oppressed groups.

There’s more information on the special issue and the Australian Journal of Primary Health herehttps://www.publish.csiro.au/py/content/CallforPapers#1. Final submissions are due by 15 July 2022 but we’re asking that people submit EOIs in the form of an abstract by 30 March 2022.

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December 20, 2021

Reflecting on 2021 for the Australian Journal of Primary Health

The past year has also seen significant changes in academic publishing. There has been an emphasis on rapid dissemination of research findings during the pandemic, increasing the prominence of pre-publication manuscripts and reinforcing the need for timely peer review. There has been a significant increase in the volume of manuscripts submitted, including to the AJPH.

At the same time, it is more difficult than ever to find peer reviewers for submitted articles. There has been a significant increase in the pressures on people’s time, through their paid jobs, but also because of juggling caring responsibilities during multiple lockdowns. Many people have been redeployed to support health systems and organisations to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Australian Government’s decision to not provide any financial support to universities during the pandemic has led to thousands of jobs being lost across the sector over the past year, with more losses likely to come. Precarious employment has become even more entrenched and fewer people are in jobs that include service to the profession as part of their roles. This leads to fewer people being able to undertake reviews at the time we need high-quality peer review most.
— Read on www.publish.csiro.au/py/Fulltext/PYv27n6_ED

It’s been a pleasure being an Associate Editor for AJPH, and it was good to have this opportunity to reflect on the pst year with Virginia Lewis and Jenny Macmillan as I’m stepping down.

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October 1, 2021

Ensuring culturally diverse communities aren’t left behind on the road out of COVID

“We are always engaged after there is a problem – never upfront. The damage that has been done is quite severe on the ground and there is a lot of feeling that this is racist”- Randa Kattan, CEO of the Arab Council Australia

Tweet

Croakey published a comprehensive summary of the think tank workshop hosted by the UNSW School of Population Health and organised by my colleague A/Prof Holly Seale. It features some inspiring practical activities led by culturally diverse communities, and the findings of research from across Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.

“This current pandemic again highlights that there is a critical need to ensure services, communication and efforts and other pandemic strategies are designed and delivered in a culturally responsive way,” she said. Seale stressed collaboration with people from CALD backgrounds, including refugee communities, was critical to improving future pandemic plans as well as continuing ongoing COVID-19 activities.

Engage and empower: ensuring culturally diverse communities aren’t left behind on the road out of COVID

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