Getting it Together: A Rural Health Promotion Program

Abstract

The Getting It Together Rural Health Promotion project was established by a group of community health providers in Gippsland, Victoria. The overall aim of Getting It Together was to extend and improve health promotion practice amongst participating organisations. This was achieved through collaboration around health promotion training and planning. Complementary strategies addressing Cardio-Vascular Disease (CVD) were developed across four Local Government Areas (LGAs). Central resourcing was provided for coordination of the project, and for marketing and network support tasks. The project was based on an integrated and coordinated health promotion model, which contained overlapping strategies combining to create a broadly based partnership of action. At the commencement of the project, health promotion workers from each LGA were provided with a three-day training course conducted by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT). Participants developed Action Plans based around the three driving strategies of community wide-strategies, targeted strategies and marketing. A special feature of Getting It Together was a common media strategy, to support and reinforce action at the local level. An overall slogan was adopted, 'Slicker Ticker - A Gippsland Healthy Heart Project'. Uniting themes included 'Stress Less Week' and 'Gippsland Get Up and Go'. Latrobe Community Health Service facilitated the project and senior managers from the partnering agencies formed a Steering Committee, which met at key intervals to monitor the project.