Page 3304 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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together and had a better resourced program with a clearer target about what you want to see out of that? I think that is worthy of further discussion. As I said, I would welcome a discussion with members in this place around that, because I am actually not sure what the answer is and what is the right way to go. For example, if you look at the health promotions money that goes out every year, the old health pact money, about $2 million goes out every year through different funding rounds for communities, schools and fall preventions. There are probably five or six different funding rounds with anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000 for some funding rounds. That goes out every year, and it has been evaluated through the life of the program.
But what if you took $2 million, carved it up in a different way, set targets and actually identified particular outcomes that you wanted to see? Would that make a difference? Would that be better value for money than funding $5,000 here for a community garden and $6,000 there for a school breakfast program? I do not know what the answer is, but I think it is worthy of a discussion as we move to dealing more comprehensively with preventive health initiatives than we perhaps have done in the past.
I think it is worth a discussion in this place or for a committee to consider. Certainly from what I can see, despite the length of time that we have had programs working and intervening in particular areas, whilst we are seeing improvements in some areas, there are other areas where we are either seeing no improvement or a continued decline. That is certainly the case for the issues of obesity and alcohol consumption, particularly within particular age and gender groups across the ACT. We are making some gains, but should we refocus and retarget? That is the question I would ask the Assembly.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (5.47): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance—the social determinants of health—and thank Ms Bresnan for bringing this important matter before the Assembly. It is an interesting discussion that the Minister for Health raised with regard to preventive health measures and how we should be targeting those. It is worthy of further debate. If we have a system where we are just spending money in a haphazard fashion that is not measuring the outcomes and we are not achieving any measurable goals, you do have to question how that money is being spent. I think we do need metrics around it. We need to make sure that our message is targeted. If it is a message about falls prevention or something that is targeting elderly Canberrans, we have to make sure it is targeted at the right demographic. That is work that needs to be done if it is not working satisfactorily at the moment.
Mr Speaker, it is widely recognised that the social determinants of health are going to have a far greater impact on a person’s wellbeing than many other areas of health policy. We talk about hospital beds and X-ray machines and other elements of health care, but the University of Canberra’s National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling found in its report Health lies in wealth that socioeconomic status is the single biggest indicator of life expectancy and health status.
I am sure we are all in agreement in this chamber on the importance of addressing the social determinants of health. However, I can imagine that we are not necessarily in
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