Elevating community voice and leadership in health and wellbeing

The issue

Historic and ongoing bias about which voices inform health research, policy and service design has created a health system not built to meet the needs of everyone in our community. Elevating community voices and leadership helps address these gaps by enabling communities to identify the issues that matter to them and the solutions that will make the most difference in their lives. These initiatives are more likely to succeed because they are tailored, context-specific and grounded in lived experience.

Our work

The WHSN is uniquely placed to amplify the voices of Victorian women and gender diverse people. We consist of nine place-based organisations covering every local government area (LGA) and specialist services with expertise in migrant and refugee health, gender and disability, and gender equity in health. As community-based organisations, our staff and boards consist of women and gender diverse people from our communities. We place community at the centre of everything we do, working to elevate community priorities and solutions.

• We support communities to have more ownership and control over their health and health services, including identifying the health issues and solutions that matter to them.

• We partner with communities to co-design and deliver tailored place-based gendered health promotion and primary prevention initiatives.

• We amplify women and gender diverse people’s voices and community action in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. 

Case studies