Western Victoria Primary Health Network (WVPHN) together with Deakin Health Economics have won the 2024 Deakin Partnerships in Practice award in the category of Rural and Regional Research.
The award was for the partnership the two organisations have developed over time. The first major project of this collaboration is the Priority Primary Care Centre (PPCC)/Medicare Urgent Care Centre (UCC) study, which is being led by WVPHN staff Naomi White, Associate Professor Jamie Swann and our Health Analytics Team and a team from Deakin Health Economics, including Professor Suzanne Robinson, Sean Randall, Feby Sevira and Maddison Frith, as well as partners at Grampians Health, Barwon Health, Southwest Healthcare and PPCC/UCC providers Eastbrooke, EPIC and UFS.
We spoke to Associate Professor Jamie Swann to learn more about our partnership with Deakin University.
Can you tell us a little more about why the award was given and the PPCC/UCC project?
The award was for the formal partnership between Deakin and WVPHN, which encompasses several components, including student placements, affiliate appointments, access to Deakin resources and experts, and grant applications.
The ‘flagship’ project of our partnership is an evaluation of the PPCC/UCCs, which will pull together health data and qualitative insights from clinicians and patients to better understand the impact of the PPCC/UCCs on reducing the load on emergency departments of hospitals. Partnering with Deakin allows us access to some of the world’s best experts on evaluating the impact of healthcare interventions, and we hope that insights from our research are translated into improving the national Department of Health and Aged Care model of care for PPCCs/UCCs.
What inspired the partnership with Deakin?
This is the culmination of a three-year journey for WVPHN, which started with developing a more effective way of meeting requests for support from universities. After establishing our Research Committee and an efficient system to review the 50 or so research proposals we get a year, it was time to think more proactivity about research and how it might be more embedded in our work, to ensure that we are always basing our work on the latest evidence and best thinking.
After receiving a lot of innovative but separate requests for support or grant partnering from Deakin University – world leaders in regional health research – we decided that we might explore a more formal and ongoing partnership.
WVPHN arranged a workshop in early 2023 with the heads of a number of Deakin schools to brainstorm what an ongoing partnership would look like. It was decided that we would be allocated dedicated Deakin contacts who would manage a consolidate portfolio, learn more about our business and hence be more effective at linking us to the most appropriate grant opportunities and researchers in general.
So far, our partnership has been incredibly productive. I think both organisations have benefited a lot. We have enhanced Deakin’s connection into the primary health system in western Victoria, providing them with insight into the critical health research needs of the area and ‘on the ground’ intelligence to ensure their research is translated into actionable interventions. In turn, we have improved our capacity to underpin all our work with the latest academic research and research methodologies. Deakin has also linked us into its network of health researchers across the globe. We’re really excited about our current and future projects with Deakin, and we think this partnership will have many real-world benefits for the health of people in western Victoria.