Public Health Strategy: Collaboration is key - 9 December 2009

With the Federal Government keen to explore how sport, recreation and active leisure can be used as a preventative health vehicle to encourage greater physical activity, surely it provides us, as an industry, with a great opportunity to capitalise on this interest and look at how other levels of government can get involved as well. By Martin Shepapard Are we ready? Probably not, but why should that get in the way? There are many initiatives in the market that local government, leisure providers and facility managers can utilise, learn from and gain assistance from? These small articles share a few of these ideas for some of the opportunities. Just one word of caution though; collaboration is a strong theme from government and the resources and networks available are seen as being available to all. Additional resources in the future it seems, will be more easily available to collaborations. We have developed a number of collaborative physical activity frameworks for local government and for leisure centres and would suggest that to maximise your potential of gaining future funding from State and Federal Government, you need to be able to demonstrate specific priorities, creative collaborations and a strong strategic framework within which you will operate. Strategic Opportunity The Federal Government will be launching a number of initiatives primarily focused on local government (Around $73 m over 3 years) to develop or facilitate programs locally around physical activity, healthy eating and healthy weight for February/March next year. If you would like more information around this give Martin Sheppard a call on (03) 8696 7503. There are a number of other initiatives that you may be interested in, including: • Healthy Spaces and Places – a national guide to designing places for healthy living, this is a joint initiative between the Heart Foundation, Planning Institute of Australia and the Australian Local Government Association. Launched in August 2009, every local government’s parks, leisure and sports manager should read and utilise this resource. “Truly leading the world” (www.healthyplaces.org.au) • Kinect Australia is the peak body in Australia for healthy living and has one of the strongest cooperative approaches to strategically promote healthy and active living in the world. Having started in Victoria, their area of influence is now in many other States and with Federal Government. Have a look at their website www.kinectaustralia.org.au • Go For Your Life Information Centre is funded by Sport and Recreation Victoria (and managed by Kinect Australia) and provides research findings, resources, electronic bulletins, and case studies, which can help provide leisure managers and local government officers with ideas. They will be promoting two regional and metro Forums in 2009/2010 – Planning for Physical Activity (date to be agreed) and Men’s Health and Physical Activity. (TBC – 2010). Explore their website at www.goforyourlife.gov.vic.au • Recently, whilst speaking on Physical Activity at Europe’s largest leisure industry tradeshow and conference (10,000 delegates and visitors) in Birmingham, UK, I had the pleasure of listening to Dr Kenneth Cooper from the Cooper Institute in America, talk about the challenges they have. For an 80 year old, he (and his wife) are very active and spend half the year traveling the world at speaking engagements. A very insightful person. This presentation, together with others, can be found at www.wrightfoundation.com who hosted the 10th Exercise Referral Scheme conference. • Back to Australia, the Victorian Government has backed the work/health initiative, where employers can gain a Health check for every employee free of charge. You can download the information from Worksafe Victoria or visit one of the accredited Health Check companies at www.chm.com.au or call 03 9441 3100 and ask for Mark Hall.

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