Colin MacDougall, from the Southgate Institute for Health, Society, and Equity, Flinders University, and Professor of Public Health, is part of a research team (see others below) on the ARC funded project ‘Beyond Bushfires: Community Resilience and Recovery’, which has just won a Melbourne School of Population and Global Health 2017 Knowledge Transfer Award.
The project examined the impacts of the Black Saturday and related bushfires of February 2009 on community members’ physical and mental health and wellbeing. The research also aimed to build understanding of the interplay between individual, social and community-level recovery. The mixed method, six year longitudinal study, involving over 1,000 participants across Victoria was conducted in partnership with community members and a range of community, academic, government, emergency, and health agencies.
The findings have been shared with community members across the State through a range of print, online and seminar forums to assist in resilience and recovery. The findings are also being used to guide government disaster recovery policy and service delivery to support positive mental health outcomes. For example, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services used the partnership to inform their policy and practice in relation to disaster recovery psychosocial services, including consideration of disaster impact in their 10 year Mental Health Plan for the State of Victoria. The Western Australia Government used the Beyond Bushfires research findings to guide the development of the State Emergency Preparedness Plan for Western Australia.