CFA makes submission on development of the National Preventive Health Strategy

CFA’s submission on a consultation paper on the development of a National Preventive Health Strategy strongly supports the preparation and implementation of the Strategy.

CFA agrees with the paper that:

  • Our health system is focussed fundamentally on the treatment of illness and disease.
  • There is a need to enhance the focus on prevention providing more balance in our health system.
  • Effective prevention requires a collective and cohesive effort across sectors to better prevent disease and to promote environments that support individuals to lead healthy lives.
  • The health sector must be enabled to play a lead role in building partnerships for prevention across sectors to address the social, economic, cultural and environmental influences on health.

The submission notes that CFA and many of its members are involved (directly or indirectly), and are interested, in consumer health and wellbeing issues, including those related to prevention. And that CFA’s direct involvements with preventative health include:

  • Advocacy on issues such as: consumer protection and empowerment, misleading/deceptive conduct, unconscionable conduct, social justice, social policy, poverty, housing, energy poverty, insufficient and inadequate information, consumer education, power and information/knowledge imbalance, etc.
  • Membership of the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand’s (FSANZ) Consumer and Public Health Dialogue (CPHD).
  • Representation on Standards Australia Technical Committees as part of the CFA Standards Project.

Also that many of CFA’s member organisations advocate for policies and programs, or provide services, that significantly influence the health and wellbeing of a range of consumers and have preventative health effects.

The submission calls for:

  • More details to be provided on how the goals will be achieved, especially the goal different sectors, including across governments at all levels, will work together to address complex prevention challenges.
  • Specific actions to be included in the next iteration of the Strategy on how to Mobilise a Prevention System.
  • More detail on how the resources will be provided to enable the health sector to play the lead role in building partnerships for prevention across sectors to address the social, economic, cultural and environmental influences on health.
  • Reducing obesity and improving mental health to be high priority areas to boost preventative action in the first years of the Strategy.

The submission is available here.