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Community and Stakeholder Engagement

Our Engagement

Planning for real health needs

Strengthening rural voices

Community and stakeholder engagement forms the corner stone of what we do. It’s consciously embedded in our culture and core function of developing and providing health services to country South Australians. Community and stakeholder engagement strengthens rural voices to help shape local health priorities based on community needs - particularly for those at risk of poor health outcomes.

Our community engagement helps us plan effectively for the real health needs of our communities. It informs our policy and commissioning approach. Our relationships with country South Australian communities help us provide tailored health services that match community need and expectation and help communities to build long-term local sustainability.

Community engagement

Effective stakeholder engagement enhances planning and informs policies, service delivery and program development. Through this engagement within local communities we gain a greater understanding of local and regional health issues. We build strong relationships with country South Australian General Practitioners and Allied Health Practitioners. We embedded Aboriginal health across country South Australia.

Community engagement is particularly important to us because of the large geographical area we cover – 99.8% of the state – and the disparate distribution of our population. To help us engage with all country South Australians we currently have Local Health Cluster (LHCs) spanning right across country South Australia.

These LHCs are essential to making sure local rural voices are heard - no matter how remote the community may be.

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Our Stakeholders

Ensuring clinically safe, patient centred & cost effective healthcare

Country SA PHN works collaborate with stakeholders to develop local strategies to improve patient outcomes – particularly those at risk of poor health and to contribute to effective local population planning. We make sure the health needs of country South Australians are included in the decision making of our key stakeholders.

We advocate for the needs of country South Australians to have a focus in all state health planning. We work collaboratively with national and state peak health organisations, local, State and Federal Governments to ensure the voice of country South Australians is present at all levels of health services discussions in this state.


Engagement & Collaboration with Universities

Mutual benefits in engaging with the University sector.

Country SA PHN welcomes approaches from the University sector proposing partnership and research opportunities.

We have the following priority partnership areas that are of specific interest:

  • Innovation – particularly addressing workforce capability & capacity and digital enablers that provide access to service or improvement to patient care
  • Vulnerable populations - as aligns to our key priority areas

We regularly contribute to course quality advisory groups, are represented on steering committees, are happy to be approached as an assistive resource for research proposals and on occasion may provide a letter of support when the outcome of the initiative clearly benefits rural and remote communities.

Country SA PHN recognises the mutual benefit in our engagement with the University sector.

Country SA PHN has collaborated on many projects with our state’s tertiary institutions. A recent example of this, is a collaboration with the University of Adelaide on GP Data analysis for population health planning. This collaboration has proved valuable for knowledge sharing and increasing capability. It has led to ongoing collaboration with university researchers and data analysts to facilitate a joint approach to analysis and interpretation of Country SA PHN’s general practice data, to inform population health planning and local research activity.

Country SA PHN has also collaborated with the
University of South Australia to create a Workforce Analysis Framework and Analysis Tool. Working in partnership with Uni SA, Country SA PHN commissioned research and development of an interactive health workforce and service need
dashboard utilising a social determinant and equity lens to facilitate access to evidence-based information for Country SA PHN staff to inform activity planning.

Approaches in the first instance should be addressed to Executive Manager Strategic Engagement at admin@countrysaphn.com.au.