Corporate Plan 2018–2019

Prioritising mental health and preventive health

We are advocating for healthy lifestyles and providing services to support better mental health

Our aim

  • Offer cost-effective pathways for people seeking help for mental health issues.
  • Prevent the spread of disease and promote higher vaccination uptake in at-risk populations.
  • Improve earlier diagnosis and treatment of Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
  • Better manage the impacts of endometriosis through earlier referral and best practice clinical care.
  • Help more Australians to receive lifesaving organ transplants.
  • Provide high quality information, expertise and support for people living with epilepsy.
  • Support earlier intervention and faster recovery for people affected by drug and alcohol abuse.
  • Improve prevention, early detection, treatment, and survival outcomes for people with cancer.

Our challenges

  • Information on mental health can be constrained by the availability of comparable national data on mental health. 
  • Increasing demand on health services continues to put pressure on existing health workforce and services. 
  • Public debate on immunisation has led to misinformation about vaccination.

Our work to achieve this initiative

  • Progressing key initiatives in mental health, suicide prevention, harmful alcohol consumption and drug use, and injury prevention.
  • Investing in maternal and infant health.
  • Delivering targeted education and strategies to improve understanding and awareness of specific areas of health.
  • Delivering targeted vaccination programs, including information about and extension of the Childhood Immunisation Education Campaign.
  • Improving early detection, treatment and survival outcomes for people with cancer.

Our role and that of our partners

  • We will continue to strengthen relationships with our stakeholders and work with local health providers and hospitals to improve services.
  • We will continue working with States and Territories to ensure a nationally consistent approach to achieving better health outcomes for all Australians.
  • We are supported by other departments who provide insight, advice, compliance and enforcement, administration of payments and/or services on our behalf to achieve our objectives including:
    • improving access to services and supports for people with psychosocial disability;
    • improving mental health and suicide prevention systems; and increasing immunisation coverage rates.

Management of identified risks

Key risks

Failure to sufficiently coordinate and integrate existing services to support people with, or at risk of, mental illness resulting in fragmented service offerings which patients and medical practitioners are unable to navigate.

Inability to reduce the incidence of vaccine preventable diseases through the National Immunisation Program and associated immunisation initiatives.
 

Management strategies

We will continue to invest and support key areas of need, such as mental health, infant health, and preventive health to make sure the community has the necessary services needed, when needed.

We will closely monitor arrangements and services provided through the Program and associated initiatives.

Measuring our performance against key measures

Performance measures

We aim to reduce the rates of preventable mortality and morbidity caused by chronic disease, substance misuse and other risk factors, such as tobacco use and dietary risks.  This will be achieved through evidence-based promotion of healthy lifestyles, early detection of cancer and other conditions, targeted education, increased immunisation, and reduced injuries from accidents. Further initiatives will be implemented to improve health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to improve the delivery and design of mental health support services and policies.

This initiative aligns to department outcomes 1, 2, 3 & 5 in the Health Portfolio Budget Statements

  • 1 Participation is defined as the percentage of people invited to screen through the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program over a two year period (1 January to 31 December) who return a completed screening test within that period or by 30 June of the following year.
  • 2 Participation in the BreastScreen Australia Program has remained stable over the past five years. The ongoing participation trend is expected to remain stable over the forward years.
  • 3 From 1 December 2017, the two yearly Pap test for women 18 to 69 years of age changed to a five yearly Human Papillomavirus test for women 25 to 74 years of age.
  • 4 Data is not available to forecast forward year targets. Targets will be updated following implementation of the renewal of the National Cervical Screening Program and the National Cancer Screening Register.
Date last updated:

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