Health promotion cannot be narrowed down to ‘prevent hospital presentations’. This is why this moment matters for health promotion in Australia.
The announcement that VicHealth will be absorbed into the Victorian Department of Health has stirred something deep in me.
It feels significant — not only for Victoria, not only for Australia, but for the global health promotion movement.
A spark on the other side of the world
My connection to VicHealth happened far from Australia — in the mid-1990s, as a medical student in Sri Lanka.
Computers and the internet were a luxury then. We waited for our turn at the university library just to get a few precious minutes online (or went into internet cafes). Browsing happened on Yahoo, not Google. The loading circle felt eternal.
Somewhere in those slow, hopeful searches, I discovered:
- VicHealth
- Professor Simon Chapman’s advocacy
- The B.U.G.A. U.P. campaign
- The growing global energy behind the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion.
I remember thinking: This is what health should be — enabling, empowering and mediating to create healthier communities.
Those discoveries planted a seed in me — a passion for health promotion, primary care, and prevention. They were part of what eventually brought me to Australia. And I know I am not the only one.
A lighthouse for the world
For countless students, public health professionals and advocates around the globe, VicHealth has been a symbol of what is possible when a society truly believes in prevention — and invests in changing the conditions that shape health.
That is why this moment matters.
What risks being lost?
Organisations must evolve. Their priorities must shift with the times.
If VicHealth were created today, its programs would look different — but its purpose would not:
- Champion health promotion;
- Prevent disease before it begins;
- Work beyond hospitals, into the places where life is lived.
And yet there is a risk: when the voice of prevention is absorbed into the machinery of “acute care,” advocacy will fade.
State health systems excel at:
- disease surveillance;
- emergency response;
- clinical delivery;
- bureaucracy.
But health promotion requires independence — creativity, disruption, partnerships beyond health, stakeholder engagement and courage to challenge the bureaucracy.
State health services were never designed for that.
A shifting definition of ‘prevention’
Since arriving in Australia in 2006, I’ve been privileged to work at a wide range of clinician, executive and governance roles across rural and remote health services.
I have seen how prevention is too often redefined into something narrow: “Prevent hospital presentations”.
Important? Yes. But is it health promotion? Absolutely not. It’s a clinical efficiency strategy — not a social transformation strategy.
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The Ottawa irony
Next year marks 40 years since the Ottawa Charter — the very moment that defined health promotion globally.
And simultaneously? The beacon of that very movement — the world’s first health promotion foundation — is going to be dissolved into a structure that prioritises treatment over prevention.
The timing is … ironic.
VicHealth is not just an organisation
It is — and always has been — a movement – a movement that once reached every corner of the world. A movement that inspired careers, changed policy, shifted culture. Saved lives!
Imagine how many more stories like mine exist — across Australia, across the world.
Now imagine what happens if those light dims.
Let’s not lose what made VicHealth extraordinary
Evolution is needed. Reform can be right and necessary. But not if it undermines the principles that made VicHealth world-leading:
- Independence;
- Advocacy;
- Innovation;
- Community/stakeholder partnership.
The world still needs VicHealth’s leadership. Australia still needs its vision.
And many future students — in Australia, Sri Lanka and everywhere — still need that spark.
Let’s make sure the movement continues!
Associate Professor Alam Yoosuff is a rural generalist GP, chair of the Murrumbidgee PHN, and a board director for the Murrumbidgee LHD. He is a clinical academic at the University of Notre Dame.
This article was first published on Professor Yoosuff’s substack. Read the original here.