Events
Centre for Healthy Community Research
New Research Centre Established
The Healthy Communities Research Centre is a new initiative, jointly established by the University of Queensland Faculty of Health Sciences and the Ipswich Hospital Foundation. The Centre will provide national leadership in improving community based participatory research, reducing health disparities and improving health care and quality of life.
Centre Director
Professor Robert Bush has been named as the Research Chair and Centre Director. The Centre and Professor Bush will be located in Ipswich, initially on the UQ Ipswich Campus with the possibility in the future of establishing a second presence near Ipswich Hospital. Professor Bush has great experience in health policy and implementation in the community. The research of the Centre will be assisted shortly by post graduate researchers and others.
Purpose of the Centre
Through identifying gaps in existing services and proposing research based solutions it is anticipated that coordinated multilateral and cross-sector approaches capable of developing broad new policies, implementation plans and outcome analyses will be developed. This Centre will be an ideal overarching catalyst towards the establishment of such a unified cohesive approach.
The Ipswich & West Moreton community remains a relatively cohesive capsule community. It embraces both rural and urban sectors, and diverse cultural groups; and with a population of approximately 150,000 it is an ideal size for demographic and sociological research and social planning. The community is slated for extraordinary growth during the next decade that will strain existing resources. The community has numerous stressors including relatively high unemployment rates, low per capita income, high levels of underachievement. These issues have spawned a wide variety of secondary problems including drug and alcoholic abuse, domestic violence, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, crime, homelessness, early school leaving, self-harming and suicide.