Advocacy will only be successful when many voices join. We call this “being inside the tent”.
Advocacy partnership or coalitions occur when like-minded people, representing organisations from inside and outside of government, aggregate resources, expertise and skills to increase influence and shape public policy outcomes.
Advocacy initiatives involve a degree of mobilising support from a wide range of partners who support the advocacy ask.
As such, PHAI works with many partners to influence policy and services. Here are a few examples.
Good Arts, Good Mental Health
Dr Mel Stoneham is involved in the Good Arts, Good Mental Health project, which involves the translation of award-winning research into an initiative to improve mental wellbeing via arts engagement.
Led by Assoc Professor Christina Davies from UWA, the initiative has been developed with more than 3000 community members, a research team from seven world leading universities and 31 government, industry and philanthropic partners.
You can sign up to the newsletter here, take the Good Arts Good Mental Health challenge here or check out the website to find out more about the project here.
Food Community Project
The Food Community project is a statewide, state-government-funded systems change project aiming to identify, map, evaluate, and strengthen food security initiatives across Western Australian regions. Dr Mel Stoneham is one of the investigators on this research, which is led by Dr Stephanie Godrich from Edith Cowan University.
One way to understand how we can improve food security among communities is to understand which initiatives (such as projects or programs) exist that focus on food availability, access and use. Unfortunately, we do not have a good understanding of such initiatives in WA. This project aims to get a comprehensive understanding of which initiatives are operating, what they focus on or whether the current initiatives are appropriate or effectively working as a system to improve food security.
The project started as a pilot in the South West region of Western Australia in 2018, and is now being implemented across WA regions including the Wheatbelt, Midwest, Great Southern, Kimberley, Goldfields and Pilbara regions.
For more information, see the Food Community website and follow the Facebook page (@ecufoodcommunity).
Food Action Groups Project
Obtaining sufficient nutritious, affordable and quality food in regional locations is challenging due to various barriers within food systems and supply chains. This project aims to understand community and stakeholder perceptions of a ‘good food pathway’ (food supply chain), the barriers and enablers of achieving food access in regional and remote Western Australia (WA).
Across regional WA, food producers, retailers, freight workers, early years workers, local and state government staff and Aboriginal agencies have been participating in focus groups to identify impediments to the current food pathway in their region, positive drivers of the pathway, proposed impacts of a Food Action Group, and if established which stakeholders needed to be involved and how.
The Trachoma Partnership
Trachoma is a preventable disease that can cause blindness.
The main risk factors are the inability to wash face and hands and to a lesser degree, the inability to wash bed linen, clothes and towels. If you want to find out more about this, visit the #endingtrachoma page.
As with many projects, we found the allocated funding for the project was unable to address the needs of remote communities, so negotiations commenced with a range of like-minded new partners. The partners we are showcasing here, amplified the #endingtrachoma’s advocacy goals of ensuring a consistent key message and promoting health through low-cost and affordable innovations that could do more with less, for as many people as possible. The two partners that “came into the tent” were Rotary International and Melbourne University’s Indigenous Eye Health (IEH) Division.
The IEH are our message partner and Rotary’s EndTrachoma are our investment partner. The #endingtrachoma project adopted the existing IEH message of Six Steps to Stop Germs as well as the existing mascot for trachoma, Milpa.
Adopting this message meant we had an evidenced based key message that had been co-designed with Aboriginal partners. It allowed consistency, and a framework on which to base our hygiene kits and yarns with tenants. All contents in the hygiene kits that we provide to remote households as part of a healthy home assessment, align with the six steps to stop germs message. The team also places a sticker with that message inside the house, meaning the message is disseminated to environments it would not normally be seen.
Rotary’s EndTrachoma project has the same values and goals as the #endingtrachoma project. They invested in our project by supplying the bulk of the contents for the hygiene kits – coloured towels, face flannels, shampoo, tissues, toothpaste and toothbrushes. In addition, based on data the project gathered which indicated that many remote communities did not have adequate laundry facilities or washing machines, Rotary’s EndTrachoma project funded two portable washer dryer trailers. These are in the NG Lands and the Pilbara.
We very much value these partnerships not only to improve health for remote families but also to join forces to enable more powerful advocacy efforts. The creation of these partnerships, show that when crafted well, coalitions can produce effective and mutually beneficial outcomes, share power and go beyond a research focus and embrace strategies for mutual benefit for all.
The Wave Project
Alcohol Advertising and Aquatic Environments:
Building Evidence for Change
Funded though Healthway, this project is the first to explore the impact of outdoor and digital advertising in and around aquatic settings in Western Australia, with a focus on 16 to 24-year-olds. It brings together a collaborative, multidisciplinary team to explore and quantify the impact of outdoor and digital advertising in and around aquatic settings.
Managed by CERIPH and led the Alcohol Project Team, the project uses GIS analysis and an environmental audit to identify hot spots for identifying, recording and geo-coding outdoor alcohol advertising. It reviews social media platforms used by young people to examine the depiction of alcohol products and their use in aquatic settings and compliance with alcohol advertising codes, and it involves intercept surveys. These surveys collect data to examine knowledge, attitude, beliefs and behaviour related to alcohol, alcohol advertising, sponsorship and participation in aquatic activities.
Associate Prof Christina Pollard is involved in this project. For more information head to the website.
You can also read a peer reviewed journal article on the evidence behind the project here.
We would like to acknowledge and thank our key advocacy partners
