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Background Intersectoral action on social determinants of health to reduce health inequities requires policy research beyond the usual social and human services. We ask how Australian energy policy affects health equity. Methods Document analysis and policy case studies on how goals, objectives and strategies of all Australian energy policies address equity. Results Energy policy affects health via risk from unreliable energy; difficult transitions to renewables; disproportionate effects on poorer people faced with high energy bills versus other basics; ecological degradation; cost pressures on businesses and governments; job losses and policy paralysis about renewable energy and climate change. Policy features subsidies for the disadvantaged; privatisation and artificial markets; differing geographical distribution of resources and high level political conflict about whether it can deliver on 3, or only 2, of the ’energy trilemma’ of reliability, affordability and ecological sustainability. Mining, industrial and political interests, powerful enough to orchestrate the downfall of Australian prime ministers, actively close policy links between health, climate change and energy. Bridging energy and health policy requires political support for market solutions involving renewables; community generation of renewable energy; solutions for rural and remote areas; and global treaties. Intergenerational equity is a strong policy lever. Conclusions Health in All Policies approaches can creatively engage with the language and concepts of energy policy via the daily conditions of living, inequity and climate change. When it is difficult to engage, researchers can connect with non-government organisations who bridge sectors through simultaneous advocacy for equitable health, climate and energy policies. Key messages Powerful interests burn bridges between health equity and energy policy. Local and global policy levers harmonising terminology differences build bridges between energy, climate change and health equity.

Background In February 2009 Victorian rural communities were hit by the worst bushfires in Australian history. Immediately we evaluated community groups preparing residents for bushfires. Ten years on, we are one of the few teams to evaluate medium to long term community recovery using multiple methods. As climate change becomes more visible, the frequency and intensity of disasters will increase so communities, governments and service providers need more evidence based strategies and policies. We explore how participant led visual methods provide new knowledge. Methods In study 1 participants in 3 of 7 focus groups in peoples’ homes spontaneously brought photos for us to examine before the discussions. In another participants spoke of the importance of photos they took at the time. We returned to the field to interview people in their homes about the meaning and role of photos. Results Participants wanted to inform us-as outsiders-of the awe and enormity of the fires. They created a visual record to communicate with key interest groups and ward off complacity as memories receded. Photos helped them construct timelines and meanings of the intense fires. Crucially, they recorded recovery and rebuilding in both the built and natural environments. Over the next ten years we chronicled stories from community led visual methods of communication, recovery and empowerment. We incorporated into qualitative methods participant led tours of their environments, with visual methods. Visual data collected by communities focused more strongly on the natural environment than researcher led verbal methods. Conclusions Visual sociology changes as technology provides participants in research with increased access to, and control over, visual methods. These changes can rebalance power relations between qualitative researchers and participants and bridge visual and verbal methods; crafting striking stories to influence those Australian policies unresponsive to climate change. Key messages Technological change enables participants in qualitative research to initiate visual methods to build bridges between them and researchers. Community led visual methods provide new types of data useful for theory and knowledge translation.

Intersectoral action between public agencies across policy sectors, and between levels of government, is seen as essential for effective action by governments to address social determinants of health (SDH) and to reduce health inequities. The health sector has been identified as having a crucial stewardship role, to engage other policy sectors in action to address the impacts of their policies on health. This article reports on research to investigate intersectoral action on SDH and health inequities in Australian health policy. We gathered and individually analysed 266 policy documents, being all of the published, strategic health policies of the national Australian government and eight State/Territory governments, current at the time of sampling in late 2012-early 2013. Our analysis showed that strategies for intersectoral action were common in Australian health policy, but predominantly concerned with extending access to individualized medical or behavioural interventions to client groups in other policy sectors. Where intersectoral strategies did propose action on SDH (other than access to health-care), they were mostly limited to addressing proximal factors, rather than policy settings affecting the distribution of socioeconomic resources. There was little evidence of engagement between the health sector and those policy sectors most able to influence systemic socioeconomic inequalities in Australia. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In the disaster literature, psycho-social recovery is conceptualised typically as the alleviation of traumatic stress, with the alleviation of disaster-related grief as a less prominent part of this. Yet, incorporating grief understandings into recovery conceptualisations post disaster is important. This paper explores these conceptualisations by analysing participants' bereavement experiences following the Black Saturday bushfires. It draws on data from Beyond Bushfires, a mixed-methods study (n = 1,016) in which survey and interview data relating to individual loss and recovery experiences were examined. The loss through death of friends and community members was found to be predictive of poorer mental health outcomes, although prolonged grief outcomes were rare. The sense of relationships as being 'like family' was identified by interviewees as an important dimension of their particular communities, as was coping with multiple deaths and the hierarchy of grief that emerged, and the stress of notifying others of these deaths. The implications of these impacts are considered for social work research and practice.

Background: Disasters have a significant impact on mental health that may be mitigated by promoting resilience. This study explores the lay perspective on public health interventions that have the potential to facilitate resilience of adults who experience a natural disaster. Conclusions: Disaster recovery interventions designed within an ecological model can promote a comprehensive integrated systems approach to support resilience in affected populations. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted 6 months post-disaster between June 2011 and January 2012 with 19 people who experienced the 2010/11 Victorian floods. Twenty lay witness statements from people who presented to the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission were also selected for analysis. Transcripts were analysed using an interpretive and comparative content analysis to develop an understanding of disaster resilience interventions in an ecological framework. Results: The participants identified resilience focused interventions such as information that help individuals manage emotions and make effective decisions and plans, or enable access to resources; face-to-face communication strategies such as public events that restore or create new social connections; rebuilding of community capacity through coordination of volunteers and donations and policies that manage disaster risk. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This article describes some of the crucial theoretical, methodological and practical issues that need to be considered when evaluating Health in All Policies (HiAP) initiatives. The approaches that have been applied to evaluate HiAP in South Australia are drawn upon as case studies, and early findings from this evaluative research are provided. The South Australian evaluation of HiAP is based on a close partnership between researchers and public servants. The article describes the South Australian HiAP research partnership and considers its benefits and drawbacks in terms of the impact on the scope of the research, the types of evidence that can be collected and the implications for knowledge transfer. This partnership evolved from the conduct of process evaluations and is continuing to develop through joint collaboration on an Australian National Health & Medical Research Council grant. The South Australian research is not seeking to establish causality through statistical tests of correlations, but instead by creating a 'burden of evidence' which supports logically coherent chains of relations. These chains emerge through contrasting and comparing findings from many relevant and extant forms of evidence. As such, program logic is being used to attribute policy change to eventual health outcomes. The article presents the preliminary program logic model and describes the early work of applying the program logic approach to HiAP. The article concludes with an assessment of factors that have accounted for HiAP being sustained in South Australia from 2008 to 2013.

Debates about the theory and practice of participation and participatory strategies have become consistent features of policy development throughout the world. In Australia, as elsewhere, governments routinely employ strategies such as community consultation as a means of creating opportunities for participation. It has been argued that these measures are as much an attempt to contain or manage the demand for representation by a myriad of interest and pressure groups as they are an expression of democratic principles or highly valued public opinion. Nevertheless, governments and interest groups alike have been advocating expanded consultation programs and seeking to refine the process of consultation in order to achieve optimum benefits for all parties. Much of this attention is focused on the mechanics of how to undertake consultation exercises which are efficient and effective. By contrast, this paper discusses the structural factors in a government bureaucracy which will facilitate or impede consultation with communities. It draws on the findings of a research consultancy conducted by the authors for one large commonwealth government department in Australia. The research suggests that while the skills and performance of individual officers are important, there are several key organisational indicators in the government bureaucracy itself which will determine its ability to consult effectively.