The importance of 'place' and its influence on rural and remote health and well-being in Australia.

Aims: This article explores the crucial role of 'place' as an ecological, social and cultural determinant of health and well-being, with a focus on the benefits and challenges of living rurally and remotely in Australia.

Context: The health system, including health promotion, can contribute actively to creating supportive environments and places that foster health and well-being among individuals residing in rural and remote locations. For First Nations peoples, living on Country, and caring for Country and its people, are core to Indigenous worldviews, and the promotion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and well-being.

Building Capacity in Monitoring Urban Liveability in Bangkok: Critical Success Factors and Reflections from a Multi-Sectoral, International Partnership.

Cities are widely recognised as important settings for promoting health. Nonetheless, making cities more liveable and supportive of health and wellbeing remains a challenge. Decision-makers' capacity to use urban health evidence to create more liveable cities is fundamental to achieving these goals.

What is the meaning of urban liveability for a city in a low-to-middle-income country? Contextualising liveability for Bangkok, Thailand.

Background: Creating 'liveable' cities has become a priority for various sectors, including those tasked with improving population health and reducing inequities. Two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050, with the most rapid urbanisation in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). However, there is limited guidance about what constitutes a liveable city from a LMIC perspective, with most of the evidence relating to high-income countries, such as Australia.

Evidence-Informed Planning for Healthy Liveable Cities: How Can Policy Frameworks Be Used to Strengthen Research Translation?

Purpose Of The Review: A compelling body of research demonstrates associations between urban design and health, but this research is often not reflected in urban policies. This article reviews the literature on the science and practice of translating health research into urban policy and planning. Two Australian case studies demonstrate how policy frameworks can help guide evidence-based planning for healthy urban environments.

Transforming Health Professionals into Population Health Change Agents.

Background: With the recognition that professional education has not kept pace with the challenges facing the health and human service system, there has been a move to transformative education and learning professional development designed to expand the number of enlightened and empowered change agents with the competence to implement changes at an individual, organisation and systems level.

Design And Methods: Since 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services in Victoria, Australia, in collaboration with The University of Melbourne's School of Population and Global Health, has delivered seven population health short courses aimed to catalyse participants' transformation into population health change agents. This paper presents key learnings from a combination of evaluation data from six population health short courses using a transformative learning framework from a 2010 independent international commission for health professionals that was designed to support the goals of transformative and interdependent health professionals.

Evaluation of population health short courses: implications for developing and evaluating population health professional development initiatives.

Population health as an approach to planning is key to improving the health and well-being of whole populations and to reduce inequities within and between population groups. The Victorian Department of Health North and West Metropolitan Region, in collaboration with The University of Melbourne (School of Population Health), have delivered four annual population health short courses. The short courses were designed to equip participants with knowledge and skills to implement population health approaches upon their return to their workplaces.

Developing a research and practice tool to measure walkability: a demonstration project.

Issue Addressed: Growing evidence shows that higher-density, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods encourage active transport, including transport-related walking. Despite widespread recognition of the benefits of creating more walkable neighbourhoods, there remains a gap between the rhetoric of the need for walkability and the creation of walkable neighbourhoods. Moreover, there is little objective data to benchmark the walkability of neighbourhoods within and between Australian cities in order to monitor planning and design intervention progress and to assess built environment and urban policy interventions required to achieve increased walkability.

Urban liveability: emerging lessons from Australia for exploring the potential for indicators to measure the social determinants of health.

It has long been recognised that urban form impacts on health outcomes and their determinants. There is growing interest in creating indicators of liveability to measure progress towards achieving a wide range of policy outcomes, including enhanced health and wellbeing, and reduced inequalities. This review aimed to: 1) bring together the concepts of urban 'liveability' and social determinants of health; 2) synthesise the various liveability indicators developed to date; and 3) assess their quality using a health and wellbeing lens.