Academic literature on the topic 'Environmental health Victoria Latrobe Valley'

A low-cost wastewater disposal system was commissioned in 1959 to treat domestic and industrial wastewaters generated in the Latrobe River valley in the province of Gippsland, within the State of Victoria, Australia (Figure 1). The Latrobe Valley is the centre for large-scale generation of electricity and for the production of pulp and paper. In addition other industries have utilized the brown coal resource of the region e.g. gasification process and char production. Consequently, industrial wastewaters have been dominant in the disposal system for the past twenty-five years. The mixed industrial-domestic wastewaters were to be transported some eighty kilometres to be treated and disposed of by irrigation to land. Several important lessons have been learnt during twenty-five years of operating this system. Firstly the composition of the mixed waste stream has varied significantly with the passage of time and the development of the industrial base in the Valley, so that what was appropriate treatment in 1959 is not necessarily acceptable in 1985. Secondly the magnitude of adverse environmental impacts engendered by this low-cost disposal procedure was not imagined when the proposal was implemented. As a consequence, clean-up procedures which could remedy the adverse effects of twenty-five years of impact are likely to be costly. The question then may be asked - when the total costs including rehabilitation are considered, is there really a low-cost solution for environmentally safe disposal of complex wastewater streams?

The Getting It Together Rural Health Promotion project was established by a group of community health providers in Gippsland, Victoria. The overall aim of Getting It Together was to extend and improve health promotion practice amongst participating organisations. This was achieved through collaboration around health promotion training and planning. Complementary strategies addressing Cardio-Vascular Disease (CVD) were developed across four Local Government Areas (LGAs). Central resourcing was provided for coordination of the project, and for marketing and network support tasks. The project was based on an integrated and coordinated health promotion model, which contained overlapping strategies combining to create a broadly based partnership of action. At the commencement of the project, health promotion workers from each LGA were provided with a three-day training course conducted by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT). Participants developed Action Plans based around the three driving strategies of community wide-strategies, targeted strategies and marketing. A special feature of Getting It Together was a common media strategy, to support and reinforce action at the local level. An overall slogan was adopted, 'Slicker Ticker - A Gippsland Healthy Heart Project'. Uniting themes included 'Stress Less Week' and 'Gippsland Get Up and Go'. Latrobe Community Health Service facilitated the project and senior managers from the partnering agencies formed a Steering Committee, which met at key intervals to monitor the project.

Consumer involvement is at the heart of improving health care, but involving consumers is difficult. This paper documents a process of developing a consumer reference group in northern Victoria to assist in developing a proposal for a coordinated care trial. The Goulburn Valley Consumer Reference Group was developed, maintained and able to meet its objective of developing a model of coordinated care. The group developed good relationships, which fostered commitment, open discussion and debate, and input from all group members. The group identified key issues in rural and regional health care, including access, information, staff shortages, cost, communication and coordination. Although the group is not 'representative', it includes the perspectives of some who do not typically have high rates of participation in health. The success of and problems raised by this process can be used to inform models of consumer participation in health.

Current changes in the funding of health promotion in community health in Victoria require community health agencies to integrate health promotion with service delivery. This provides both opportunities and challenges for community health staff. Members of the Children's Service Team at Plenty Valley Community Health Inc. addressed these changes by developing an integrated health promotion plan. The approach used involved identifying client pathways and then integrating opportunities for health promotion interventions into these pathways. Staff perceptions of the process involved in developing the plan were examined. The use of client pathways to integrate health promotion into everyday practice proved a successful approach for members of the Children's Services Team, and provides a useful model for health promotion planning in community health that helps staff to see the relevance of health promotion to their practice, and engages staff in the planning process. Members of the Children's Services Team reported that the process involved in developing their integrated health promotion plan was a very worthwhile experience that allowed them a strong sense of ownership of the plan.

Gaseous elemental mercury observations were conducted at Churchill, Victoria, in Australia from April to July, 2013, using a Tekran 2537 analyzer. A strong diurnal variation with daytime average values of 1.2–1.3 ng m–3 and nighttime average values of 1.6–1.8 ng m–3 was observed. These values are significantly higher than the Southern Hemisphere average of 0.85–1.05 ng m–3. Churchill is in the Latrobe Valley, approximately 150 km East of Melbourne, where approximately 80% of Victoria’s electricity is generated from low-rank brown coal from four major power stations: Loy Yang A, Loy Yang B, Hazelwood, and Yallourn. These aging generators do not have any sulfur, nitrogen oxide, or mercury air pollution controls. Mercury emitted in the 2015–2016 year in the Latrobe Valley is estimated to have had an externalized health cost of $AUD88 million. Air pollution mercury simulations were conducted using the Weather Research and Forecast model with Chemistry at 3 × 3 km resolution. Electrical power generation emissions were added using mercury emissions created from the National Energy Market’s 5-min energy distribution data. The strong diurnal cycle in the observed mercury was well simulated (R2 = .49 and P value = 0.00) when soil mercury emissions arising from several years of wet and dry deposition in a radius around the power generators was included in the model, as has been observed around aging lignite coal power generators elsewhere. These results indicate that long-term air and soil sampling in power generation regions, even after the closure of coal fired power stations, will have important implications to understanding the airborne mercury emissions sources.

This thesis presents work completed for the Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE). My first placement was at the Communicable Disease Prevention Unit at the Tasmanian Department of Health, where I completed my first three projects. My second placement was at the Environmental Health Group, Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, where I completed my final project. I evaluated the Tasmanian adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) surveillance system, using the framework described in the Center for Disease Control's Updated Guidelines for Evaluating Public Health Surveillance Systems. This project comprised both qualitative elements, namely interviewing of identified stakeholders, and also quantitative data analysis of the surveillance system dataset. I demonstrated that the Tasmanian AEFI surveillance system requires low resources, is stable, simple, fairly flexible, and with evidence of geographically and demographically representative data. However, several limitations were identified, including poor data quality, low awareness of the system in AEFI reporters, evidence of underreporting and low sensitivity, poor timeliness, limited usefulness, and some missed opportunities to engage in dialogue with consumers and vaccine providers about vaccine safety. I made several recommendations for improvements to the system. For my major epidemiological study, I evaluated the first five months of the Tasmanian Meningococcal W Vaccination Program in schools. This program was rapidly rolled out in July 2018 in response to the emergence of meningococcal serogroup W disease in Tasmania, targeting all Tasmanians aged 15-19 years and primarily using school-based delivery. A major component of the evaluation was a process evaluation assessing council and school perspectives of the program, using focus groups and an online survey respectively. The evaluation identified several strengths and challenges, informing some modifications to the program. Additionally, it gave valuable insight into barriers to immunisation in the school setting in Tasmania, which has wider relevance to ongoing meningococcal and other routine school-based immunisation programs. For my acute public health problem investigation, I led a case-case study to investigate a cluster of Salmonella Typhimurium cases in Tasmania, using notified Salmonella Mississippi cases as the comparison group. This study unfortunately was limited by fluctuating case numbers and did not include a large enough sample to identify the source of the cluster, and importantly was unable to support or refute the hypothesis that fresh chicken was the source. Nevertheless, lessons learned from this project, including on case-case methodology and appropriate selection of cases, were useful both to myself and the Communicable Disease Prevention Unit. My fourth project was the analysis of a dataset collected as part of the Hazelwood Health Study Latrobe Early Life Follow-up Cohort Study. This study aims to understand the impact of the February 2014 Hazelwood coal mine fire in the Latrobe valley, Victoria, on the health of children exposed to coal mine fire smoke in utero or in early childhood. I analysed baseline survey data and monthly health diaries collected between June 2016 and October 2018 for a subset of children enrolled in the cohort study, to evaluate the association of coal mine fire smoke exposure (both in utero and in early childhood) on parent-reported respiratory and atopic health outcomes. This analysis forms part of a new body of evidence describing the health impact of the coal mine fire and has important implications for both the Latrobe valley community, and for the future public health management of similar severe smoke events.