Australian Health Priorities

Health priorities in Australia
Australia’s health care systems are designed in a way that majority of funds and resources are used on curative services and facilities such as pharmaceuticals and hospitals. Health promotion is embracing a new preventative approach by using the effectiveness of the Ottawa charter.
The role of Australian health systems is to achieve a balance between resources of prevention and resources of treatment. There has been a changing emphasis from cure to prevention.
Australian health care systems involve complex interrelationships between: commonwealth, state and local governments. Health insurance funds, public and private providers of services: for example doctors, institutions e.g. hospitals and other organisations
Commonwealth government which is in control of the formation of national health policies and the control of health systems financing through the collection of taxes. It provides funds to the state and territory governments for health care. State and Territory governments have the responsibility for providing health and community services e.g. hospital services, mental health programs and dental health services. They also distribute funds to the community health services, public hospitals and health activities. The private sector provides a wide range of services such as private hospitals, dentists and alternate health services e.g. chiropractors. The private sector gains funds from the commonwealth and state for organisations such as the National Heart Foundation. The local governments varies health responsibility from state to state but mainly focuses on environmental control and a range of personal preventative and home care services which includes sanitation and hygiene standards, waste disposal and immunisation. Community groups are formed to address local needs and problems specific to an area. Some groups also promote health, some communities groups, are national and are highly structured and linked nationally e.g. cancer council and support
Health promotion is based on a holistic view on health which focuses on the preventative way of health care e.g. the Ottawa Charter.
The levels of responsibility in health promotion are individual and families, groups in the community and industry such as schools, workplaces and the media, all levels of government – local state and commonwealth, and non-government organisations both Australian and international. Governments recognised that if all individual, groups, governments and other organisations share the responsibility and join action to improve health outcomes for Australia, then the health promotion will be most successful.
Partnerships within health care benefit health promotion. The Ottawa charter can be used as a checklist for health promoting agencies, both government and non-government. The five areas of the Ottawa charter are developing skills, strengthening community action, reorienting health services, creating supportive environments and building healthy public policy. If all of these elements of the Ottawa charter are adopted then the risk of people or populations adopting poor health behaviours in the first place are vastly reduced and these people engaged In poor health behaviours are encouraged to reduce or eliminate these actions, resulting in improvement of their health and a decreased burden on the health care