What's new

Launch of The Knowledgeable Patient: Communication and Participation in Health

Checklists for rural consumers travelling for health care, and a resource list for health services 2010

Doing it with us not for us: Strategic direction 2010-13

Participate in Health Conference: My Story Matters 2009

Report and Government response on the Evaluation of Community Advisory Committees

Seminar: Findings of the Evaluating Effectiveness of Participation projects – 15 September 2008

Workshop: Health Issues Centre's Consumer Nominee Program and the supports it provides when recruiting consumers, carers and community members for committees – 9 September 2008.

Seminar: What to do when the evidence tells you something you don’t want to know? – 28 March 2008

$200,000 funding for Evaluating Effectiveness of Participation projects for Victorian health services

Participate in Health Conference - Making it work: Presentations now available

Related sites

Health Issues Centre

Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group

Victorian Quality Council

Consumer, carer and community participation and information

The Victorian Department of Health supports a range of initiatives which promote and support consumer involvement in decision-making about their own treatment and care, in service development and quality improvement, and more broadly, in health policy developments.

From 2006 – 09 this support was guided by the ‘Doing it with us not for us’ policy and strategic direction on consumer, carer and community participation. The department developed the policy in partnership with health services, consumers, carers and community members. To view the policy development process click on the How to Participate section of this website.

For the period 2010-13 a new strategic direction for ‘Doing it with us not for us’ has been developed. The ‘Doing it with us not for us: Strategic direction 2010-13’ incorporates a new set of participation performance indicators for health services. These indicators were developed with health services and consumers, carers and community members and the background reports on their development are also available from the How to Participate section of this website.

As part of the department’s Consumer Participation and Information Program the Health Issues Centre is funded to support and promote consumer participation. Similarly, the Centre for Health Communication and Participation is funded to identify evidence based improvements to clinical practice focusing on consumer interactions with health care professionals, services and researchers.

For further information on the Consumer Participation and Information Program please contact Cath Harmer on (61 3) 9096 6176 or via email on catherine.harmer@health.vic.gov.au.