Action for Equity
Description and aims
This stream supports better and fairer health for families and communities locally, nationally and internationally. There are three research programs within this stream.
Key current research areas
Children and young people
This program focuses on understanding the needs of vulnerable families and developing and trailing interventions to improve child and young people’s health, development and educational outcomes, including individual, family and service system interventions.
Communities and Populations
This program focuses on the health and wellbeing of whole communities and populations. Research in this program is conducted with communities, populations and organisations, and address planning and policies.
Equity Implementation and Social Innovation
This program focuses on building individual, community, organisational and service system capacity to effectively implement tools and interventions to improve health and development outcomes for families and communities.
Key partners
Key partners in the stream and its research programmes are local communities (particular the Tharawal community in South Western Sydney), consumer groups and community advocates, health districts, local councils, and industry.
Stream lead
Evelyne de Leeuw and Fiona Haigh jointly lead this stream.
Completed
Projects
NSW Health Impact Assessment Project - Phase 3
Built on Phases 1 and 2 with a view to integrating HIA into the NSW Health System as a tool to improve internal planning and decision-making, and as a way to engage external partners on initiatives which influence health outcomes.
The Gudaga Study: Describing the health, development, early education, family environment and service context of Aboriginal children aged five to nine years in an urban location.
The aim of this new research is to describe the health, early learning and service context of these urban Aboriginal children from age 5 to 9 years.
The impact of COVID-19 on community-based asylum seekers: a scoping review
Evidence suggests refugees are experiencing significant economic hardship due to disproportionate job loss, difficulty accessing relief, and reduced support during the COVID-19 lockdown measures. This project is unmasking the (unequal) impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugees and community-based asylum seekers globally.
The impact of universal home visiting on access to child and family health nursing services in Sydney South West Area Health Service
The Families NSW Initiative includes universal home visiting for all families with newborn infants to connect vulnerable and at-risk families who do not access centre-based services to child and family health services
Volunteer Family Connect: The development of a best practice model of volunteer home visiting to support vulnerable families
Researchers from the University of New South Wales have partnered with three leading NGO’s who provide volunteer home visiting services to support vulnerable or isolated families. Drawing on the research literature and extensive practice experience, we have developed and documented in a manual a best practice program to support high quality program implementation.
