SACHRU's work of providing a primary health care research and evaluation service for community health and primary health related services continued in 2007. Community health and primary health care are underpinned by a social understanding of health and especially an understanding of the social determinants of health. Such an approach to health is central to the South Australian Strategic Plan and SACHRU is pleased to present this report of activities that demonstrates the ways in which we are able to contribute to the achievement of this plan.
We are very pleased that Aboriginal health research features strongly in our work program for 2007. A highlight of this work was SACHRU's role in supporting the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health's hosting of the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health Indigenous Symposium. This meeting was attended by Indigenous peoples from around the world and resulted in a report tabled and discussed in Vancouver at the June 2007 meeting of the Commission. We also continued our NH&MRC-funded project on the social aspects of Indigenous people's health in Adelaide and worked particularly on the data we have collected from 153 people relating to their reports of racism and the ways in which this affects their health. Our work on Aboriginal Health is greatly helped and supported by our link to the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. Michael Bentley and I are program leaders of the Social Determinants of Health program and were pleased to see the publication of some of the work of the program in a research monograph.
SACHRU's work continued to have global links. We are partners to a successful international research grant application on comprehensive primary health care, led by Canada and South Africa. In 2007 this research focused on an international review of literature on primary health care and Catherine Hurley and I traveled to South Africa to present the review relating to Australia and the Pacific region and to plan the next stage of the project which will focus on training. We also continued our international links relating to Healthy Cities including a meeting with a delegation from Thailand which Gwyn Jolley co-ordinated.
SACHRU conducts a large number of consultations with a wide range of agencies delivering health promotion and primary health care services across South Australia. This activity enables us to determine ways in which this complex work, often offered to some of the most disadvantaged and least healthy people in our community, succeeds and what would make it more effective. You will see from the description of this work that from these evaluations we are in a position to take the pulse of community health activity in South Australia through our links with the work at the grassroots of service delivery.
Our training activity plays an important role in the staff development of the primary health care workforce in South Australia. We find that we increasingly undertake this work on a request basis and so tailor our training very specifically to the needs of the organization. This method tends to be particularly effective as staff are able to take their collective learning back to their work places and then support each other in implementing the new skills and ideas.
Most importantly, I would like to thank all members of SACHRU's Advisory Committee for their support in this period, especially Adair Garret, our Chair, and Bernadette Roberts, our Deputy Chair. Andrew Stanley, Helen van Eyk and Heather Petty (SA Department of Health) have, as ever, been supportive as our funders. Prof. Roy Goldie (Executive Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences) has supported SACHRU fully. We were pleased to welcome Professor Paul Worley to the position of Dean of Medicine at Flinders (and consequently my supervisor) and thank him for his support. It will be evident from this report that SACHRU staff members are incredibly dedicated and hard working with amazing commitment to the Unit's activities and the values that underpin the social justice approach that guides our work.
Professor Fran Baum PhD
Director
Read more of the 2007 Director's report in SACHRU'S report of activities 2007 (1,023kb)
