Healthy for Life Evaluation Activities

Provides information on the requirements for evaluation of the Healthy for Life program

The Healthy for Life Evaluation and Outcomes Framework was developed by a consultant appointed by the Department of Health and Ageing, in collaboration with the Healthy for Life Evaluation and Outcomes Reference Group. Health Services were represented on the Evaluation and Outcomes Reference Group and Round 1 Healthy for Life organisations were consulted. This included two rounds of site consultation visits.

Evaluation and Outcomes Framework
The Support, Collection, Analysis and Reporting Function (SCARF)
Essential Indicators
Population Measurement

Evaluation and Outcomes Framework

The objectives of the Evaluation and Outcomes Framework were to:

• Assess the effectiveness, efficiency and appropriateness of the Healthy for Life program in achieving its stated objectives and outcomes;
• Inform ongoing improvements at the health service and health system levels and the program design and policy level;
• Provide evidence to inform best practice in maternal and child health and chronic disease within a quality improvement framework at the service level;
• Be technically sound; and
• Be informed by health service, State and Territory and National work on performance indicator development and usage.

In June 2009 Urbis Pty Ltd completed the final report on the ‘Evaluation of the Healthy for Life Program’(PDF 2004KB).

The Final Report found the flexible approach of the Program for the delivery of high quality maternal and child health services and chronic disease care to be well designed and consistent with its objectives. The Program enabled services to respond to locally-identified needs. Urbis recommended the Program retain its focus on continuous quality improvement (CQI). The Report emphasises the importance of collecting good quality population level data to inform service improvement. Urbis also found that the nature and range of the program support provided has been a key success factor in the Healthy for Life Program’s implementation. There have been significant gains in the quality of data collected for maternal and child health and chronic disease care.

Urbis discussed many problems and criticisms from service providers and advocacy groups in reaching their Final Report.Top of page

The Support, Collection, Analysis and Reporting Function (SCARF)

SCARF was undertaken by Menzies School of Health Research, in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), and SRA Information Technology Pty. Ltd between 31 March 2007 and 31 December 2011.

In developing the Evaluation and Outcomes Framework, strong emphasis was placed on the use of data to support learning at both the local and national levels. Recognising that there are diverse services involved with differing management structures, program delivery models at differing stages of development, staff skills and data capacity, the SCARF Team worked directly with Healthy for Life services to improve the quality of their data and assist services in using their own data for local learning to improve service delivery.

The SCARF involved 6 monthly data collection. The 6 monthly National Reports which aggregate service data, inform participating health services and the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (OATSIH) on the progress toward program objectives, expected outcomes and national and service level learning.

Since March 2008, Healthy for Life services have entered their data on OSCAR (OATSIH Support Collection, Analysis, Reporting), a non-public web based data collection tool. Access to Oscar was closed on 30 November 2011 when the data collection was replaced by OCHREstreams. Please refer to http://www.ochrestreams.org.au

Essential Indicators

1. The Healthy for Life program developed a set of Essential Indicators to measure and demonstrate progress against its objectives. Data from the Essential Indicators measured achievements toward the short and long term outcomes of the Healthy for Life Program. The Essential Indicators focused on significant chronic diseases, health assessments and maternal and child health.


Technical specifications for the Essential Indicators Version 5.1 (PDF 426 KB)
Fact Sheets (PDF 237 KB)

Population Measurement

The Healthy for Life program is based on a population health approach to service delivery. However, to enable consistency of reporting measures across sites only ‘regular’ clients were to be included in Essential Indicator reporting.

A regular client definition of 'two attendances within three years’ was agreed for the Healthy for Life Program in December 2008.

Reporting against the Essential Indicators was at the aggregate service level. No client level data was collected. Aggregated data was collected and reported as a total over a given reporting period and does not contain identifying information.

Services provided quantitative and qualitative data for 11 Essential Indicators in 2 reports per year, a 6 monthly report in February which included only quantitative data on the chronic disease indicators and a major annual report in August which included quantitative and qualitative data on maternal, child health and chronic disease indicators and a range of qualitative data on service profile and infrastructure indicators.

Collection and collation of data from Patient Information Recall Systems (PIRS) was primarily the responsibility of the service but the SCARF Team (including AIHW staff and Quality Improvement Facilitators) assisted service staff to analyse their data. Services were able to use their service level reports and trend graphs from the OSCAR system to monitor their service performance against the Essential Indicators and benchmark against the National Reports. The trend graphs provided a visual representation of data that could be presented to a wider audience such as service staff, management boards and community members and demonstrated improvements in service delivery over time and also demonstrated the community’s disease burden. Services used their data to monitor and improve their client care and service delivery using the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Model.

It is expected that the annual Healthy for Life National Reports for data collected for the reporting periods 2009-10 and 2010-11 will be published by AIHW in the near future.

If you are unable to access any of the attachments please email OATSIH Enquiries or phone: 02 6289 5291Top of page

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