Page 5256 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 29 November 2017
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community. This demonstrated how pervasive this issue of preventative health is to our community and how important it is to our community.
Guests from local businesses, educational institutions, and peak industry and community bodies gathered together to listen and to share their thoughts about how we, as a community, can keep our city healthy and do more to prevent and manage chronic disease. As I said on the day, we can and must do more.
While Canberra is Australia’s healthiest city on many measures, with low smoking rates and a high life expectancy, many more people are living with chronic health conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers, which are largely considered preventable.
With consultation to commence early next year, and a strategy to be published shortly thereafter, I was pleased to make three early announcements to get the ball rolling. First, the $2.7 million health promotion grants program opened on 20 November for initiatives that aim to improve the health of the ACT population.
Secondly, the government will provide the University of Canberra with $150,000 to develop a concept for a living lab for healthy and active living, together with other institutions, government agencies, businesses and the community, into a full business plan for consideration by potential funding partners. Thirdly, we were delighted to have Petr Adamek, CEO of the CBR Innovation Network and his team who will kickstart a discussion on innovation and healthy and active living in December. Petr spoke at the event. I look forward to CBRIN’s bright ideas coming forward next month.
MS CODY: Minister, how will the government’s approach to preventative health enable the ACT to be Australia’s healthiest city?
MS FITZHARRIS: In outlining the government’s new approach to preventive health, I highlighted the following as key concerns of the strategy as it develops. We need to address health risk factors and better understand how Canberrans can make good healthy choices, helping them to make simple changes to lead a more healthy and active life.
As part of this, we will build a strong, broad-based research capability in preventive health which is able to inform policy and practice in the ACT. We will harness innovation to commercialise research in preventive health and grow and diversify business opportunities in the sector. And we must use our healthy and active living commitment as a way to attract people to live in our city as well as it being a drawcard for visitors who want to experience a city strongly committed to the health and wellbeing of its citizens.
When we get this right, there will be personal and community benefits for people being healthy and active, including longer and better quality of life and reducing inequality linked to poor health outcomes; economic benefits from business having a healthy and reliable workforce as well as the potential development of preventive health related businesses and opportunities, including the export of services;
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