Year-in-Review-2021-22 - Flipbook - Page 62
Health Equity
Research
Development
Unit (HERDU)
The Health Equity Research
Development Unit is a partnership
between Sydney Local Health
District and the University of NSW.
HERDU works in partnership with health services,
organisations and communities to identify and
reduce existing inequities in health and to prevent
inequities in health from arising in the future.
HealthPathways
HealthPathways is an online clinical
decision support and referral tool
used by clinicians to help make
assessment, management and
specialist request decisions for
hundreds of medical conditions.
HealthPathways supports general practice
to develop sustainable, clear, concise, local
pathways for patient care. It is a collaboration
between primary and secondary healthcare
providers including Sydney Local Health District
and the Central and Eastern Sydney Public
Health Network.
In 2021-22 HealthPathways Sydney published
a further 31 new clinical, resource and referral
pathways and completed 275 content updates
and 47 reviews of existing content, including
specific pathways and updates for COVID-19.
User engagement increased by 37 per cent
and there was a 45 per cent increase in users
accessing the Sydney Platform.
The roll out of eReferral continues with 480
practitioners across 178 practices now utilising
digital referrals.
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In support of the strong partnership between
Sydney Local Health District and the Centre for
Primary Health Care and Equity, UNSW the District
committed to a further five years of funding
(2022 – 2027) for the partnership research hub.
Highlights:
• Continued to support the COVID-19 pandemic
response producing plans, rapid reviews,
activities, equity-checks, spatial analysis and
mapping, and guidance on equity-related
impacts in relation to current and emerging
vulnerable population groups, including the
implementation and facilitation of the COVID-19
Vaccine roll out; developed a system to match
positive COVID case notifications to social
housing and boarding house properties within
the District, to enable early intervention and
response; conducted a District-wide Equity
Focussed Health Impact Assessment (EFHIA)
to inform COVID-19 recovery plans and future
epidemic or pandemic responses.
• Hosted EquityFest 2021 with almost
400 participants – held over four weeks the
virtual conference focussed on the theme
“The future of health equity – Learning from
a pandemic”, where together in partnership
with communities, consumers, government and
non-government organisations; participants
collectively and aspirationally envisioned a
more equitable future.
Sydney Local Health District
