Research projects

Learning from local communities: Prevention Tracker expands

Prevention Tracker is working with a number of communities across diverse areas and populations of Australia to help us to better understand local communities’ prevention systems and then guide and monitor communities’ work to prevent chronic disease.

Shedding light on how health policies are implemented

This project is exploring some electronic methods for collecting data about health prevention policy and program distribution - to examine and quantify the extent to which resources and organisational capacity contribute to implementing policies and achieving targets.

Losing weight and keeping it off

The project will investigate the effectiveness of financial and social incentives to maintain weight loss that participants achieve during the Healthy Weight For Life program.

Integrating mind and body: combining physical and mental health

This project is exploring the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of a locating a designated preventive care practitioner in a mental health service to address clients’ chronic disease risks.

Strengthening the evidence for childhood obesity strategies

Using a case study approach, the project investigated the enablers and barriers to successful implementation of childhood obesity management strategies using the experiences of implementing evidence-based programs in Queensland and NSW.

Benchmarking obesity policies in Australia

This project assessed whether globally recommended policies for creating healthy food environments are being implemented in Australia. It created report cards of Australian performance, clearly recognising good performance and highlighting areas for further improvements.

Mapping national action to prevent chronic disease

This project mapped State and Territory prevention responses to two national prevention initiatives: the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health and the 2005 National Chronic Disease Strategy.

Unlocking the potential of law to prevent chronic disease

The project is developing empirical research tools that policy makers and researchers can use to identify deficiencies in existing public health law and to inform the design of legislative reform. These tools will build the capacity of those invested in prevention to respond to the epidemic of chronic disease with innovative, tailored and practical policy models.

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