Environments for healthy living
The Griffith Strategic Research Program on Environments for Healthy Living is an emerging program which will develop into one of the largest population health research activities conducted in Australia.
Over the course of the next 25 years the program aims to support a measurable improvement in the health of populations in South East Queensland. Through a mix of observational and experimental studies, the program will provide the scientific evidence from which policies can be developed to reduce the population burden of the major conditions of public health importance; i.e. Asthma, Cardiovascular Diseases, Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, Injury, Musculo-skeletal conditions, and Mental Health.
The Program’s initial flagship project, the Griffith Population Health Study, is being piloted in 2006 to become fully operational in 2007. This is a ground-breaking major longitudinal study of a Queensland birth cohort, which draws together a comprehensive range of environmental measures with health, social and life-course monitoring and outcomes. The Study focuses on South East Queensland, a geographically well-defined, yet very diverse living environment. This region’s population is an extremely heterogeneous mix of sub-populations spanning the extremes of social advantage and disadvantage. It has the fastest growing population in Australia, and exemplifies the challenge of providing effective health promotion in outer metropolitan areas in Australian cities and similar environments world-wide.
One of the Program’s major targets is optimising the health of disadvantaged populations through structural change. It recognises that even while important advances have been made in recent decades in the science of preventive health, the social inequalities in health outcomes have widened. New approaches to preventive health policy and the design of urban environments are needed to establish more comprehensive improvements in public health.
The Griffith Strategic Research Program on Environments for Healthy Living draws on the resources of Griffith University’s School of Medicine, Heart Foundation Research Centre, Genomics Research Centre, Urban Research Program and its leading researchers in epidemiology, criminology, health psychology, health economics and spatial analysis. International collaborations are being established to add power and wider applicability to the Program’s research.
Members / affiliated programs, schools, and centres
Programs
Centres
- Genomics Research Centre
- Griffith Medical Research College
- Griffith Psychological Health Research Centre
- Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance
- Urban Research Program