IFIC Australia Webinar Series 2021

There’s no doubt about it: globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare stark inequalities in the attainment and experience of good health and wellbeing, in the acute phase of the crisis and as we move into recovery. But the pandemic wasn’t the first crisis to render inequality and injustice visible, and it won’t be the last.  This is inequality and injustice that people working across the Australian health, legal, social and community services landscape know all too well.

Both public health and access to justice literature point to the conditions in which we are born and live as key determinants of our ability to enjoy health equity and justice. In the context of the pandemic, they are conditions that rely on people enjoying access to stable, safe and affordable housing; adequate employment, income and social security; freedom from violence, whether in the home, on the street or in the workplace; and financial independence and security, free from the stress of fines and debt. Each of these experiences will impact a person’s health and wellbeing; impacts that will likely bring those people into contact with health services. But they are conditions health services alone can struggle to secure for the people that turn to them for help.

In the experience of individuals, health inequity and injustice deeply interact, and for some can be one in the same: injustice can affect health, and health inequities affect justice outcomes. Given this interaction, how do we bring together diverse expertise across health and justice systems and services, broadening the range of skills, knowledge, tools, connections and experiences to address these complex and intersecting issues? One way is through health justice partnership.

This webinar will draw on Health Justice Australia’s experience as the national centre of excellence in health justice partnership to share:

• What health justice partnerships are working to achieve across Australia, for whom
• What opportunities health justice partnership provides existing integrated care infrastructure, to align health and legal service approaches around shared interests (despite the different lenses through which those interests are seen and understood)
• How health justice partnership can be used as a tool to transform the levers of injustice and inequity, enabling the health social and community services landscape in Australia to build a COVID-normal service system that is cohesive, person-centred and responsive to the social determinants of health.