Stopping the river of illness at its source

The vital question is: how to achieve a better balance between curative health and the range of prevention and health promotion activity required to halt the tragedy of unnecessary illness unfolding before us?

Re-directing money and energy from healthcare to health is challenging because we have come to expect a hospital bed and affordable treatment when we need it. But we need to stop the river of illness at its source.

The recent announcement by the Victorian Government of a world-first workplace health screening program, to be funded by WorkSafe surplus funds, is a great example of leadership and a creative solution to finding additional funds for prevention. The country is in great need of these kinds of partnerships that provide additional funds, and take us outside of a narrow healthcare system paradigm.

We need leadership that can help us achieve a vision for better health. This vision needs to embrace more than the effective management of those who are already ill or at immediate risk. A “system for health” must provide us with mechanisms for increasing investment in promising health promotion initiatives and build the evidence for what works best.

The National Prevention Summit held in Melbourne on 9 April was launched by the Federal Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon. Nicola Roxon. It established a set of principles to guide an approach to prevention that will facilitate not only healthcare reform, but also a broader community approach.

Now more than ever, we need to draw on the creative insight of leaders from all around the country from a wide range of community sectors, to explore how we can collectively develop a health system that truly embraces the full range of prevention and health promotion approaches required.