Healthy Together Geelong is one of 12 prevention areas under the Victorian State Government’s Healthy Together Victoria initiative which is a $100m cluster randomised trial of a novel, ‘whole-of-system’ intervention which has as one of its aims to halt and reverse rising trends in adulthood obesity. The trial is a world first, at scale attempt to apply and evaluate complexity and systems thinking approaches to primary prevention of chronic disease including childhood obesity and its determinants.
Healthy Together Geelong has been tasked with assisting 75% of businesses with 20 or more staff in the Local Government area of the City of Greater Geelong to work through a State-wide Achievement Program to create healthy environments for employees.
The Victorian Health Promotion Achievement Program is based on the WHO health promoting workplaces framework1. Participants receive guidelines, resources and ongoing support to help meet state-wide benchmarks for health promotion.
The WHO system building blocks2 of leadership, partnerships, financing, workforce development and information underpin the wider systems intervetion. This presentation focuses on approaches utilising the WHO system building blocks to deliver the Achievement Program in workplaces at scale in a local government.
To date 67 of the >250 businesses are registered and 14 of them have progressed through the first stage. Businesses involved include insurance brokers, transport companies, University, TAFE, hospitals, health services, a local government, the Traffic Accident Commission, State Government Departments, hardware stores, the AFL clug the Geelong Cats and more. There are 101,039 people in the labor force in the City of Greater Geelong local government area. Businsees involved in the Acheivement Program to date employ over 27,000 staff.