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Local Government Planning for Health & Wellbeing Public Health Group Department of Human Services

Introduction

The primary purpose of this document is to provide information and guidance to councils preparing Municipal Public Health Plans (MPHPs). During the development of the MPHPs municipalities will work closely with the Department of Health and Community Services (H&CS).

This manual is a working document and not the definitive statement on MPHPs. While there is a need for some consistency in content and approach across the State, local plans should reflect the conditions and needs of individual communities.

These guidelines are designed to cover key elements which should be included in all MPHPs, while allowing for a high level of flexibility to suit the particular circumstances of each council.

The determinants of ill-health are changing. The public health concerns of the 19th Century such as rats, drains, pure water, sewerage, overcrowding and adulterated food, have largely been met and replaced by modern day hazards. Today, the common causes of illness and death are cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, accidents and violence. The aim of public health programs is to create a physical, social, economic and cultural environment which enables people to avoid ill-health and achieve maximum well-being. Public health programs differ from other programs by focusing on prevention through the creation of healthy environments, rather than changing the individual.

In 1988 the Parliament of Victoria enacted a series of major reforms to the state's public health legislation. These changes are designed to bring the law in Victoria into line with the public health concerns of the late 20th Century.

The Health (General Amendment) Act 1988 clarifies and simplifies the law relating to the activities of local government in public health. It removes a number of restrictive regulatory controls and gives councils greater freedom to determine their own priorities.

Functions Of Councils

The new legislation sets out for the first time the long-standing, but previously unwritten, functions of local government. The Act states:

29A. The function of every council under this Act is to seek to prevent diseases, prolong life and promote public health through organised programs including the prevention and control of:-

1. environmental health dangers; and
2. diseases; and
3. health problems of particularly vulnerable population groups-by :
4. isolating the special factors affecting the health of people within the municipal district; and
5. developing and enforcing up-to-date public health standards and intervening if the health of people within the municipal district is affected; and
6. monitoring the activities of and assisting other agencies whose work has an impact on public health and, if necessary, advocating on behalf of the people within the municipal district for adoption and enforcement by those agencies of appropriate standards; and
7. co-ordinating the immunisation of children living or being educated within the municipal district; and
8. ensuring that the municipal district is maintained in a clean and sanitary conditions.

Municipal Public Health Plans

In order to take account of the dynamic nature of local government and the fact that public health problems and priorities change over time, the Act makes provision for councils to document their major public health activities in a public health plan.

Under the Act:

29B.

1. Every council must in consultation with the Chief General Manager [of the Department of Health and Community Services], prepare at three year intervals a municipal public health plan.
2. A municipal public health plan must -

(a)identify and assess actual and potential public health dangers affecting the municipal district; and

(b) outline program and strategies which the council intends to pursue to -

(i)prevent or minimise those dangers; and

(ii)enable people living in the municipal district to achieve maximum well-being; and

(c) provide for periodic evaluation of programs and strategies.

3. Every council must review its municipal public health plan annually and, if appropriate, amend the plan.

Rationale

MPHP's are intended to serve four related purposes:

• to enhance local responsibility and accountability for the performance of municipal public health functions;
• to encourage further co-operative arrangements between neighbouring councils and between councils and local agencies/service providers in the achievement of public health objectives;
• to provide a means by which public health planning and service delivery may be better co-ordinated, and to assist in reducing the differences in enforcement of public health controls by local councils; and
• to assist the development and adoption of innovative local government programs which respond to the new and old threats to public health.