Don’t Dismantle a Leader: VicHealth’s Crucial Role in Food Systems Transformation in Victoria

The Victorian Government has announced that VicHealth – the state’s internationally recognised, independent health promotion agency – will be abolished and incorporated into the Department of Health, ending more than three decades of prevention-focused leadership.

The decision has shocked public health experts, community organisations and former government leaders, who warn that dismantling VicHealth’s independent structure will undermine critical long-term prevention work at a time when chronic disease, health inequity and food system challenges are intensifying.

Against this backdrop, we at Sustain: The Australian Food Network are adding our voice to the growing calls urging the government to reverse this decision.

In the words of Sustain’s Executive Director Dr Nick Rose:

“The decision by the Allan government in Victoria to abolish Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) by “absorbing” it into the Department of Health is a disaster for the health of Victorians.

As Executive Director of Sustain: The Australian Food Network I have witnessed the transformative effect that VicHealth’s leadership in food systems has had over the 10 years of our existence. So much bold, ground-breaking work is being done that would never have happened without the vision, passion and commitment of VicHealth’s executive, Board and staff.
VicHealth is a world-leading exemplar of preventative health and health promotion. Dismantling it is short-sighted in the extreme.

I join the call made by the Public Health Association of Australia to #SaveVicHealth and urge others to do the same.”

How can you help Save VicHealth?

Sign the petition here and share it with your networks.

Follow Friends of VicHealth on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Use Friends of VicHealth’s guide to contact Premier Jacinta Allan or your local Member. The guide is here and the email template is here.

You can find all of Friends of VicHealth’s resources including background information, newsletter texts, socials tiles and more here.

VicHealth’s role in food systems transformation in Victoria

As the world’s first health promotion foundation, VicHealth has been instrumental in major reforms and initiatives, including the Quit and SunSmart programs, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program, the This Girl Can Program to support Victorian women and girls to be active, and the first Victorian breast screening and cervical screening programs.

VicHealth has played a transformative role in supporting healthy, fair and sustainable food systems in Victoria and have supported Sustain’s work since we started out.

In particular:

In 2019, VicHealth recognised our long-term partnership with Cardinia Shire Council on the collective impact Cardinia Food Circles initiative with a Health Promotion Award for ‘outstanding efforts to improve community health across Victoria‘. This prestigious award provided us and Cardinia Shire Council with confidence and encouragement to continue with the further development of the Food Circles initiative as well as adapt and replicate this model in other places, notably in the City of Banyule with whom we partnered in 2022-23 to create their first Urban Food Strategy

In 2021, VicHealth funded us to write three core health promotion modules, Building Better Food Systems for Healthier Communities, as a core component in its Local Government Partnership flagship. These modules led directly to several collaborative partnerships that we worked on with local governments in subsequent years, including the Ballarat Local Food Coalition, the Golden Plains Local Food Network, the Rural City of Wangaratta Sustainable Food Alliance and the Central Goldfields Food System Roadmap. This LGP flagship, now expanded through Partners in Place (see below), has been vital in building capacity, experience and motivation in local governments across the state in working to address systemic barriers to good health and wellbeing

VicHealth has been vital to our place-based urban farm food justice and First Nations internships at Oakhill Food Justice Farm and Bundoora Park Farm, through their Growing Healthy Communities funding stream

VicHealth’s ground-breaking Local Partnerships for Food First places our Australian Food Network digital platform for food system changemakers at the centre of this initiative, which brings together nearly 60 organisations in 8 place-based collaborations around the state. This provides affirmation, validation and visibility for our work as well as much-needed funding. The Partnership approach that VicHealth have designed and implemented follows world-leading best practice, such as the Sustainable Food Places initiative in the United Kingdom

VicHealth’s recently concluded Partners in Place funding round will further significantly boost place-based collaborative partnerships for tackling systemic barriers to good health for Victorians as well as build the skills, knowledge and capacity of 20 local governments by placing them as leading players. We have been included as key partners by three local governments wishing to focus on food systems in this work and such funding will be vital to our ongoing viability as a small not-for-profit social enterprise

VicHealth’s strategic long-term focus on systems transformation has provided us with the confidence to advocate strongly to the Victorian and Federal governments for policy measures to tackle entrenched disadvantage and move us towards a healthy, sustainable and fair food system for all Victorians. Most recently, we were supported by VicHealth in putting together a submission to DTP, calling on the Victorian government to amend the Victorian Planning Provisions and the Planning and Environment Act to give local governments the power to stop the further expansion of the fast food industry, which is causing such tremendous harm to the health and wellbeing of Victorian children, youth and families (see attached)

VicHealth’s funding, strategic focus and leadership is crucial to achieving better population health outcomes for Victorians through supporting Sustain and other organisations to work for a healthy, fair and sustainable food system.

VicHealth has strong connections with communities across Victoria and it is these trusted relationships that make their place-based approaches and partnerships so effective throughout Victoria.

VicHealth is effective because of its independence, its prevention-focused mandate, and its ability to partner directly with communities, researchers, and the health promotion workforce. Moving VicHealth into the Department of Health will almost certainly erode that critical independence, disrupt longstanding community partnerships and will make prevention efforts invisible within a Department whose key responsibility is hospitals and health service delivery.

The Productivity Commission has called for more investment in prevention — not less. The pressures of chronic dietary-related disease, mental ill health and growing inequities make VicHealth’s evidence-based, community-led health promotion more important than ever.