Welcome to the Sydney Health Policy Network!
It has long been argued that departments in universities, governments and non-governmental organisations alike have a tendency to work in silos. Although it may be easier to work with people with the same philosophical, political, theoretical or practical background, the health policy problems that we face today require multidisciplinary solutions. For example, appropriate responses to mental health problems will likely include several different government sectors in their policy solutions. In response to the growing need for cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary research and policy, the Sydney Health Policy Network was formed in August 2010.
The Sydney Health Policy Network aims to provide a structure to promote cross-disciplinary health policy research, education and advocacy. It links researchers, educators and advocates across the divisions of the University of Sydney, its teaching hospitals and research institutes. Although the Network is in its infancy, it already has over 200 members representing a range of different faculties including traditional health faculties/schools, such as Medicine, Public Health, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Health Sciences, as well as faculties of Engineering, Law, Agriculture, Arts, Education and Social Work, among others.
In addition to the Network’s general membership, it is in the beginning stages of establishing Special Interest Groups in Workforce policy, Disease Prevention, Health Governance and a multidisciplinary postgraduate student group. These groups seek to include external members from the state and commonwealth governments, non-governmental organisations and consumer groups to encourage focused policy discussions among experts with a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives.
The Network hopes to facilitate dialogue among researchers, practitioners and policy makers and move towards identifying feasible policy solutions to the health policy problems that we currently face. In doing so, we hope to translate p-values to practical policy with the potential to improve the health of Australians.
If you are interested in joining the Network, please visit our website: http://sydney.edu.au/health-policy-network/
We look forward to your contributions to the Network! Please contact shpn@sydney.edu.au if you have any questions about the Network or if you want to get involved.
