Citizen Engagement: Listening to citizens views about Australia’s health system and prevention

Project Team

Project Outline

The project will apply and evaluate innovative methods for engaging citizens in dialogue about health policy. Deliberative processes have been used in health policy debates in other countries including Canada for the Romanov Commission on the Future of Health Care, advising parliament in Denmark on controversial issues such as fertility treatment and gene therapy, and in UK have included discussions about the future of the National Health Service. The Citizen Engagement Project will build on international evidence to apply and evaluate innovative methods for engaging citizens in meaningful dialogue about health policy, and focus on developing ways to use citizens’ views as input to future health policy development. This project will be one of the first large-scale efforts to conduct a series of linked deliberative forums in different states of Australia. It will apply a whole-of-society approach to chronic disease prevention and promotion that may be highly relevant to current, major policy issues that many middle- to high-income countries are grappling with in relation to the health system and health reform.