National Health Taskforce: Role, Objectives, and Formation

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the National Health Taskforce, a body established by the Australian government and healthcare experts to enhance health promotion and prevent illnesses. It defines the taskforce's role in guiding policy, implementing strategies to reduce health risks, particularly related to tobacco, alcohol, and obesity, and fostering partnerships across various sectors. The report details the taskforce's formation in 2008, its objectives including developing a lasting preventive health strategy, and advancing health promotion policies. It also highlights the taskforce's advocacy, capacity building efforts, and its commitment to evidence-based practices and collaboration to improve health outcomes for all Australians. The report references several key sources to support its analysis of the taskforce's functions and impact.

Running head: National health taskforce 1
National health taskforce
Name
Institution

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Define and discuss the role of national health task force
The national health taskforce is an affiliation which was made by the government and
different healthcare experts in order to fortify the health promotion attempts as well as take more
determined actions to prevent illnesses. The foundation of this taskforce aims at providing a
national dimension that will initiate change and movement in health interventions and activities
that takes forward the reforms in a systematic manner, and which concurs with the national
certification to improve health outcomes for all Australians. According to McDougall (2016), the
role of the national health taskforce is to provide guidance on policy and programs which helps
in the growth, implementation and examination of strategies to reduce health risks for
individuals, especially those affected by tobacco, alcohol and obesity. The taskforce
acknowledges this action by setting up and keeping up the affiliations required to drive
development on concurred necessities for a composed, expansive way to deal prevention and
health promotion by identifying a wide range of associates including community and non-
government groups across sectors (Smith, Crawford, & Signal, 2016). The taskforce is also
responsible for driving the improvement of dynamic learning frameworks that empower
evidence-based method and practice in adjusting action and health movement in Australia by
ensuring progress strategies and programs are supported by the best affirmation with world-class,
reasonable research limit.
When and why it was formed
The national health task force was formed in the year 2008 so as to give national ability
to drive preventive health approaches and projects to the people of Australia (Gen, & Wright,
2012). Its establishment was also to strengthen the investment and infrastructure in the
preventive health of Australia. The national health taskforce has been able to provide policy and

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leadership as well as establish partnerships with the state, territory governments, community
health promotion organizations as well as the primary care health providers to ensure the
effectiveness of the healthcare policies and programs. In keeping up with the commitment of the
Australian government to ensure that the services are efficient and well targeted, the national
health taskforce has been able to make a number of policy recommendations in regards to
obesity, alcohol consumption, as well as the control of tobacco (Smith, & Herriot, 2017). The
taskforce has further developed its role in advocacy and capacity building so as to accomplish
the best health results for the system both through working with all levels of government and
associations. similarly, the taskforce propels key methodologies and advancement targets
through the media, open events and other possible techniques. Basically, the national prosperity
taskforce was formed to search for better people prosperity results reliant on expectation, social
determinants of health and the principles of standard value.
Objectives of the national health taskforce
One of the objectives of the national taskforce is to develop an inclusive and lasting
preventive health strategy for the people of Australia (Fisher, Baum, MacDougall, Newman, &
McDermott, 2016). By conducting local and international researches, the task force aims at
discovering how the Australian people can be the healthiest country by the year 2020. This is in
relation to obesity, tobacco and alcohol. To achieve this objective, the taskforce is tasked with
planning major changes so as to seek extensive information from the major stakeholders as well
as conduct national discussions with state and local organizations on the need for urgent action.
Another objective is to advance and guide the improvement, application, reconciliation and the
survey of open, hierarchical health advancement approaches (Wutzke et al., 2018). The taskforce
aims at achieving this objective by providing effective prevention and health promotion

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strategies for use at local, national and state levels through innovative and effective policy
development, supporting the use of evidence-based practices, as well as engaging all the
stakeholders in to share the learnings as well as influence the development and implementation
of evidence-informed health promotion policies. Additionally, the taskforce will offer advice by
monitoring policy environments, research, actively measuring, evaluating and reporting on the
existing interventions, establishing a collaboration culture as well as examining the models of
funding.

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References
Fisher, M., Baum, F. E., MacDougall, C., Newman, L., & McDermott, D. (2016). To what extent
do Australian health policy documents address social determinants of health and health
equity?. Journal of Social Policy, 45(3), 545-564.
Gen, S., & Wright, A. C. (2012). A framework for policy advocacy. Retrieved on 12th April from
https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com/
&httpsredir=1&article=1954&context=sspapers
McDougall, L. (2016). Power and politics in the global health landscape: beliefs, competition
and negotiation among global advocacy coalitions in the policy-making
process. International journal of health policy and management, 5(5), 309.
Smith, J. A., Crawford, G., & Signal, L. (2016). The case of national health promotion policy in
Australia: where to now?. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 27(1), 61-65.
Smith, J. A., & Herriot, M. (2017). Positioning health promotion as a policy priority in
Australia. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 28(1), 5-7.
Wutzke, S., Morrice, E., Benton, M., Milat, A., Russell, L., & Wilson, A. (2018). Australia's
National Partnership Agreement on preventive health: Critical reflections from states and
territories. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 29(3), 228-235.