Community Health Review

Feeback from the 2004 Roadshow.

The Hills Mallee Southern Regional General Manager asked the Directors of Community Health and Primary Health to review community health services in the Region and advise him on strategies for a regional approach.

This paper describes a regional approach to community health, which creates a regional community health leadership structure and supports area management.

The Community Health Directors developed the following statement, which the Regional General Manager approved as the aim of the review.

'To influence and contribute to the development of a regional framework for primary health care so that community health is established as a strong sector with a preventative / early intervention mandate to address social inequities and achieve population based health outcomes'

This is a copy of the Hills Mallee Southern Region Community Health Review Presentation to staff June 2004.

This is a statement of the Hills Mallee Southern Community Health Services and how they adopt our regional values and interpret them with a community health context.

The following information is sourced directly from the Department of Human Service’s Information Management data, available through the DHS intranet. It provides the South Australian profile of Burden of Disease using averaged data over the three year period 1999-2001. Data explanations are provided by DHS.

If you want to know about ... then the measure you should use is... People living with a condition (morbidity burden) Years of Healthy Life Lost to Disability (YLDs) Premature death (mortality burden) Years of Life Lost (YLLs) The overall impact of disease Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) Disease due to risk factors (eg smoking, obesity) Risk factor burden

The First Steps Forward South Australian Health Reform (June 2003) document describes the focus the Government is taking to implement the recommendations of the Generational Health Review (GHR). The GHR was the first major overall review of the South Australian health system since the Bright Report in the early 1970s.

The GHR makes a strong case for reform of the mental health, concluding that the current system is not sustainable; and that key challenges in creating a sustainable health system for the 21st Century are:

• Population changes (people living longer and ageing faster in SA than any other state)
• Social determinants of health (especially socio-economic status)
• Changing disease burden (more people dying of cancer, heart disease and a growth in people with complex, chronic and multiple health problems)
• Distribution of services (based on decisions made more than 30 years ago; do not relate to population profiles)
• Fragmentation and duplication (of planning, assessment and delivery of services)
• Health inequities (some population groups have very poor health or limited access to health services. The groups include Aboriginal people, young people and people with a mental illness)