Population Health Queensland
Population Health Queensland has around 750 staff who work to prevent illness and injury, promote and protect good health and wellbeing, and reduce the health status gap between the most and least advantaged in the community. Key population health strategies include policy, legislation and regulation; social marketing; environmental change; organisational and community development; surveillance and disease control. Population health services target the entire population (or sub-populations), rather than providing personalised treatment and care services for individuals and small groups. Population health practitioners work with a range of partners including local governments and other state and national government departments, non government organisations and Health Service Districts.
Population health practitioners come from a range of professions, including,environmental health, epidemiology, health promotion, public health medicine, public health nursing, public health nutrition and public health officers working across various program areas.
Population Health Plans
| Population Health Queensland has a cascading suite of strategic plans. The Queensland Health Population Health Plan 2007-2012 outlines the change agenda and key priorities for Population Health Queensland for this five year period. The 2008-2011 Strategic Directions Statements (formerly known as Outcome Area Plans) describe the full body of work that population health staff will be undertaking in the following priority areas: |  |
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For more information on any of these plans, please contact the Planning and Development Unit on (07) 3225 2267.
Queensland Health Population Health Plan 2007-2012 (poster)
New Population Health Research
Health inequalities or systematic differences in health status exist between various groups in the population. In Queensland, substantial inequalities in health exist for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people living in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, areas of reduced accessibility and greater remoteness, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Population Health Queensland recently funded the Queensland Council of Social Service Inc. (QCOSS) to research best practice population health interventions that effectively target disadvantaged groups to address health inequalities. Some of the success factors identified in this report included:
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applying a life-course approach to impact at critical periods
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designing programs around voiced community need
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using 'natural opportunities to engage clients
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building on people's strengths.
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