What we do

Welcome to Northern NSW Local Health District Health Promotion.

Our team is dedicated to building a healthy Northern NSW.

What is health promotion?

Health promotion works to increase people’s control over their health, so that they can be healthier.

Lots of factors affect our health. These include:

If our school, work and community environments make exercise and choosing healthy food easy
If good mental health support is available
The cost and availability of alcohol and tobacco
If people understand how to be healthy and feel confident to take action
People at increased risk of poor health are supported to stay healthy

To support people to have control over their health, health promotion must:

Advocate for healthy policies
Build evidence about ‘what works’
Work in collaboration with the community and partner organisations
Deliver programs that reduce risk factors for poor health
Provide support to those at most risk of poor health
Make health information understandable to everyone

About Us

The Northern NSW Local Health District Health Promotion team works collaboratively with partner organisations and the community to reduce risk factors for poor health, such as smoking and obesity, and to promote wellness and healthy ageing.

Our funding targets three state-wide priorities:

Additional funding allows us to also target:

Alcohol – community action
Alcohol – reducing risk for teens
Health Literacy
Equity and Aboriginal Health
Infant Hearing
Research and Evaluation

Reduce childhood overweight and obesity by:

Supporting local early childhood services to deliver a program targeting the healthy development of children birth to five years by promoting physical activity, healthy eating and reduced small screen time
Supporting local primary schools to deliver a whole-of-school program targeting improved nutrition and physical education and opportunities for more students to be more active, more often
Supporting our Local Health District to measure the height and weight of children under 16 years visiting our services
Delivering healthy lifestyle programs for children aged 7-13 above a healthy weight and their families
Working with health services to overcome barriers to referring children above a healthy weight to appropriate treatment and prevention programs

Make the healthy choice the easy choice in our health services by:

Implementing and monitoring the Healthy Choices food policy across all Local Health District sites
Supporting our food vendors to supply mostly healthy food choices on their menus

Support people to reach their health goals by:

Promoting the NSW Get Healthy Service
Working with our health services to improve referrals to Get Healthy, particularly the Get Healthy in Pregnancy program
Supporting health literacy improvement in our community and health services

Support patients and the community to become smoke free by:

Training our staff and improving local processes to increase and improve the quit smoking advice and treatment we give in our health services
Monitoring our health service’s compliance with smoke free policy
Setting up Smoke Free Health Care groups at our hospitals

Support older Australians by:

Providing online and face to face programs that support good nutrition, active lifestyles and falls prevention

Create healthy environments by:

Making submissions on councils’ community strategic plans, planning strategies, development proposals and future land use plans
Commenting on alcohol licence applications
Offering programs to activate spaces such as outdoor gym equipment ‘come and try’ sessions
Assisting in grant applications to improve public open space and increase opportunities for physical activity
Evaluating council’s public space improvement projects such as Murwillumbah’s parklet and street furniture project
Improving access to healthy food by supporting farmers’ markets and the Sustain Food collaboration
Increasing transport options, particularly for walking and cycling, via regional Transport Working Groups and integrated transport strategies

Ensure early intervention for infants with hearing loss:

The NSW State Wide Infant Screening Hearing Program (SWISH) program finds babies that are born with permanent hearing loss.
About one to two babies out of every 1,000 babies born will have hearing loss. Hearing problems can cause speech and language problems later in life. It’s important to find and help babies with hearing loss early. Find out more here.

Support equity and Aboriginal health:

NNSWLHD Health Promotion delivers increased levels of funding and programs to areas with higher numbers of Aboriginal people. This is often done in partnership with Aboriginal Medical Services. Examples include Bugalwena Quit Smoking Program, the Grafton Child and Family Wellbeing Hub and Aboriginal Go4Fun.
We consult with local Aboriginal people about culturally relevant strategies.

INFORMATION

To learn more about our programs and their impact download our Annual Report 2019-2020.

Research, reports and publications

Health Promotion is committed to evidence based practice and the ongoing generation of high quality evidence, which is relevant to local community and health service. We have a reputation for locally conducted research which has resulted in policy and practice changes across NSW and beyond. We achieve this through collaboration with research institutions and universities locally and nationally.

For more information visit our archive of program evaluations and reports.

WHAT WE DO