Emerging Trends to watch out for

Mental Health and Wellbeing

A gender-sensitive approach to improving women’s health and wellbeing will help build individual and community resilience. Taking a systems approach will address social determinants that are unique to women in our region. Furthermore, an intersectional lens on women and mental health will provide primary prevention with the opportunity to understand the drivers of poor and positive mental health and develop with our Southern Melbourne community sustainable health promotion strategies to build capacity and capability.

Climate Change and Disaster

The COVID-19 pandemic and bushfires have provided clear evidence of the gendered impact of disaster. Globally, we know that women’s health and wellbeing is especially impacted by climate change. Yet, in spite of this evidence, Australia is yet to fully appreciate this. Our work will involve raising awareness and building capacity to see health promotion improve women’s health and equity in light of disaster and climate change.

Aging

We know that for women, gender and ageing intersect and compound inequality. Older women are more likely to experience social inclusion and as a result, often lack resources and opportunities to work, engage and live healthy lives. Health promotion and primary prevention address intersectional drivers of inequality among older women by taking a social inclusion perspective.   There is no prevention framework available for older women, particularly when it comes to abuse. Furthermore, there is very little information available addressing older women’s sexual and reproductive health. Therefore, it is important to build capacity among agencies and the community to better understand specific risk factors for older women. Doing so will enable primary prevention work to create and provide suitable services for older women.