RegNet keynote at the Population Heath Congress 2022

The Population Health Congress brings together Australia and New Zealand’s four leading professional population health organisations: the Public Health Association of Australia; Australian Health Promotion Association; Australasian Epidemiological Association; and the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine. It is held every four years, and the theme this year was ‘Towards a just, safe and sustainable future for Australasia’.

RegNet’s Dr Belinda Townsend gave an invited keynote that drew on a program of work she led within the National Health and Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence on the Social Determinants of Health Equity (2015–2020). In this work she identifies lessons for navigating barriers to multisectoral policy in order to improve health and health equity.

At the keynote Dr Townsend highlighted several strategies that have been used by policy actors to successfully navigate powerful resistance to policy change. Highlighting the struggle for a national paid parental leave scheme in Australia, she spoke of the different framings and ideas, coalitions, and forums through which advocates worked to secure this landmark policy change. These strategies, Dr Townsend argued, could be used by public health actors to advance the key themes of improved justice, safety and sustainability, which all require multisectoral action.