As the blurb to the right indicates, the Croakey blog takes a sharp interest in evidence-informed policy and practice, transparency and informed public debate.
In the interests of all these worthy causes, as well as giving the pot a well-deserved stir, we are launching a new Croakey initiative.
Let’s call it the Croakey Register of Unreleased Documents (just what health needs – another catchy acronym, CRUD).
The CRUD will record the details of evaluations, plans, reviews and other such documents that should be released (whether by governments or other commissioning bodies), in the interests of promoting better informed policy, practice and debate.
Here are the first entries nominated by Croakey contributors:
• Evaluation of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy – Final Report
Prepared for Department of Health and Ageing by Urbis Keys Young
The evaluation is dated April 2006.
(Please contact Croakey if you’d like a copy)
• Summative Evaluation of the National Mental Health Plan 2003-2008
The evaluation is by US consultant Charles Curie and English psychiatrist Professor Graham Thornicroft
(Please contact Croakey if you’d like a copy)
• NHMRC review of public health research
This was conducted by Don Nutbeam and went to the Research Committee last year but has not yet seen the light of day.
(The NHMRC’s ceo Warwick Anderson comments: I have commissioned three reviews which, by coincidence, will all be released with NHMRC’ s responses, next week. Respectively the Nutbeam, Zerhouni and Berstein reports. These will be released together with a draft discussion paper for our next Strategic Plan.)
• A national evaluation of the Primary Health Care Research Evaluation & Development program.
Our Croakey informant says: “This is a major Department of of Health and Ageing initiative that has substantially increased the national capacity for and actual implementation of PHC research. This has been through capacity building funding to departments of rural health and general practice, direct research grants, research fellowships and the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute. This is an important program. For example, some of the resultant work and key researchers involved in these activities have contributed directly to informing the current policy reform debate through the NHHRC & Preventative Health Taskforce.”
• Growing the evidence base for early intervention for young children with social, emotional and/or behavioural problems: systematic literature review
Commissioned by the Victorian Department of Human Services. Dated April 2008.
Authors: Melissa Wake, Harriet Hiscock, Jordana Bayer, Megan Mathers, Tim Moore, Frank Oberklaid
• The National E-Health Strategy, written for NeHTA by Deloitte
Our informant says this has yet to be released although a brief summary was slipped out quietly on December 22, 2008, and a summary can be found here.
Here’s what the DoHA website says about this strategy which, if it is such a “useful guide to the further development of E-Health in Australia”, and is to help the States and Territories and the public and private sectors “determine how they go about E-Health implementation…”, ought to be publicly available.
“The National E-Health Strategy developed by Deloitte, together with key stakeholders, provides a useful guide to the further development of E-Health in Australia. It adopts an incremental and staged approach to developing E-Health capabilities to:
• leverage what currently exists in the Australian E-Health landscape;
• manage the underlying variation in capacity across the health sector and States and Territories; and
• allow scope for change as lessons are learned and technology is developed further.
The Strategy reinforces the existing collaboration of Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments on the core foundations of a national E-Health system, and identifies priority areas where this can be progressively extended to support health reform in Australia. It also provides sufficient flexibility for individual States and Territories, and the public and private health sectors, to determine how they go about E-Health implementation within a common framework and set of priorities to maximise benefits and efficiencies.
• A review of the Medical Specialist Outreach Assistance Program
It was commissioned by DOHA back in 2004 but has never been made public despite a number of organisations asking for copies.
If you know of evaluations, reviews and other such documents that should be on the public record, please drop us a line.
