Mergers may enhance the legitimacy of community health organisations in neoliberal environments.

Purpose: Comprehensive primary health care (PHC) models are seldom implemented in high income countries, in part due to their contested legitimacy in neoliberal policy environments. This article explores how merging affected the perceived legitimacy of independent community health organisations in Victoria, Australia, in providing comprehensive PHC services.

Design/methodology/approach: A longitudinal follow-up study (2-3 years post-merger) of two amalgamations among independent community health organisations from the state of Victoria, Australia, was conducted.

A system dynamic perspective of stop-start prevention interventions in Australia.

Time-limited prevention initiatives are frequently used to address complex and persisting public health issues, such as non-communicable diseases. This often creates issues in terms of achieving sustainable change. In this study, we use a system dynamic perspective to explore the effects of stop-start funding over system behaviour in two community-based initiatives designed to prevent chronic diseases and obesity.

Together stronger: boundary work within an Australian systems-based prevention initiative.

Complexity and systems science are increasingly used to devise interventions to address health and social problems. Boundaries are important in systems thinking, as they bring attention to the power dynamics that guide decision-making around the framing of a situation, and how it is subsequently tackled. Using complexity theory as an analytical frame, this qualitative exploratory study examined boundary interactions between local government and community health organizations during the operationalization of a systems-based initiative to prevent obesity and chronic diseases (Healthy Together Communities-HTCs) in Victoria, Australia.

Surviving neoliberalism, maintaining values: Community health mergers in Victoria, Australia.

Purpose: Independent, not-for-profit community health services in the state of Victoria, Australia, provide one of that country's few models of comprehensive primary health care (PHC). Recent amalgamations among some such agencies created regional-sized community health organisations, in a departure from this sector's traditionally small local structure. This study explored the motivations, desired outcomes, and decision-making process behind these mergers.

Service planning in the Victorian community health sector.

Until now, comprehensive service planning has been uncommon in the Victorian community health sector. Where it has occurred, it has primarily been undertaken by community health services embedded within larger, hospital-based health services. Reflections on the utility and efficacy of community health service planning are largely absent from the Australian peer-reviewed literature.

Enhancing health-care workers' understanding and thinking about people living with co-occurring mental health and substance use issues through consumer-led training.

Background: Stigma and judgemental assumptions by health workers have been identified as key barriers to accessing health care for people living with co-occurring mental health and substance use issues (dual diagnosis).

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of consumer-led training by people with dual diagnosis in improving the knowledge, understanding and role adequacy of community health staff to work with this consumer group.

Methods: A controlled before-and-after study design with four waves of quantitative data collection was used.