Our Impact and engagement team excels at facilitating meaningful advocacy, consultations and stakeholder engagement with decision-makers and the communities they serve. We bring key stakeholders together to co-create impactful, context-driven policy recommendations and solutions that drive real changes to healthcare.
Our approach supports both retrospective and prospective policy consultations on priority issues including chronic disease, health equity and access. We develop comprehensive policy briefs and foster inclusive dialogue, turning evidence and research into actionable outcomes for health policies and programs.
Our services include:
Stakeholder consultation and strategic engagement
Organisation, convening and facilitation of dialogues and meetings
Policy briefs
Community engagement and involvement strategies
Advocacy support for evidence-informed policies
Who we work with:
Local, state and national governments
Public
Turning the tide short2
A mother collecting her child from a KAVACH child-care creche.
300,000 deaths per year
Almost a quarter of all drowning deaths can be prevented by protecting children under 5 years of age
Find out how our work is making a difference
Swimming and water safety skills training are an effective intervention in reducing child deaths from drowning
Find out about our SwimSafe initiative
Over 90% of rescues in West Bengal are done by members of the community
Mangala, who works at the KAVACH centre participating in a self-help group, discussing strategies to improve community awareness around drowning prevention.
Read Mangala's story
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Childhood drowning prevention
Read more about our lifesaving work to prevent childhood drowning
Learn more
Our survey of 18 million people in West Bengal between March and December 2024, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, uncovered a crisis in plain sight: 25 p
Food is Medicine Program
Program overview
The Nutrition Science Team at The George Institute for Global Health are leading an innovative research initiative centred on food-based interventions, known as ‘Food is Medicine’.
‘Food is Medicine’ programs aim to treat diet-related diseases and reduce food insecurity by providing people with the nutritious foods they need – prescribed just like medicine. These programs often include nutrition education and are subsidised by healthcare systems as part of treatment.
Depending on a person’s medical needs and preferences, they may receive:
Medically tailored meals, or
Produce prescriptions (e.g., fresh fruits and vegetables)
Australians do not eat enough fruits and vegetables with only 5% eating the recommended amount. And access to nutritious foods is a challenge faced by up to one in four low income Australian households who experience food insecurity. These challenges are major contributors to Australia’s growing burden of
CREST - Research Training Facilitators
Our course facilitators
Protecting pregnant women from environmental change
The physiological and social demands of pregnancy are immense. A period of transformation that tests a woman's body and resilience in profound ways. Yet, this time of vulnerability also offers an unparalleled opportunity to understand and improve women's health across the life course. Environmental change including rising temperatures, air and water pollution, and extreme weather events is now emerging as a major stressor during this critical life stage, shaping both immediate pregnancy outcomes and long-term health trajectories for mothers and their children.
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. Biological factors such as hormonal and thermoregulatory changes interact with entrenched social and economic inequities --- limited access to healthcare, insecure housing, unpaid care responsibilities, and occupational exposures --- to heighten risk. For pregnant women in particular, exposure to extreme heat has been linked to complications such as preterm birth, l
Turning the tide on drowning
Where there’s water there’s risk
Drowning is one of the world’s biggest health challenges claiming around 300,000 lives each year. Over two-thirds of deaths occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region. As the climate changes, extreme weather events are on the rise and drowning accounts for three-quarters of all deaths in flood disasters.
Turning the tide on the drowning epidemic requires urgent action. But the right action requires accurate data – our comprehensive survey across vulnerable communities in coastal wetland regions of India has revealed that the burden is three times higher than previous estimates, and its hitting the young hardest.
“If we trained 17 years ago, then I could have saved my own child.By: MangalaMother who lost her child through drowning
Read Mangala's story
The drowning trap: children and vulnerable communities
Drowning is sometimes referred to as a silent epidemic - unseen, unheard and unaccounte
High blood pressure
High blood pressure (hypertension) is the leading preventable cause of death, driving millions of heart attacks, strokes and cases of dementia and kidney disease every year. It occurs when the pressure in the blood vessel walls is consistently too high and may be driven by behaviours we can change (e.g. diet, alcohol intake and inactivity) and factors we cannot (e.g. family history, age and ethnicity). Certain medical conditions may also increase the chance of developing high blood pressure, such as obesity, diabetes and kidney disease.
Despite the serious risks, high blood pressure is often overlooked. It’s called a ‘silent killer’ as there are usually no symptoms. Around 1.4 billion adults are living with high blood pressure globally - around three-quarters in low- and middle-income countries - yet an estimated 600 million people don’t even know they have it.
Without action, fewer than a quarter of people with high blood pressure will ever have it under control. This crisis is
Nutrition implementation research
Program overview
High blood pressure is the biggest cause of premature death and disability worldwide, and excess sodium intake in the form of salt, is a major contributor. Despite global commitments to reduce population sodium intake, most countries remain off track to meet these targets, highlighting the need for new approaches that can improve cardiovascular health at scale.
Our major focus of the Nutrition Implementation Research team is switching the world’s salt supply to potassium-enriched salt. Replacing regular salt with potassium-enriched salt has the potential to prevent an estimated 3 million deaths and 10 million strokes and heart attacks globally each year. Through research, stakeholder engagement and implementation strategies, the team is leading efforts to support the global transition to potassium-enriched salt and accelerate progress towards population sodium reduction.
Expected outcomes
Our research aims to support policies and programs that reduce sodium intake,
Climate-proofing care
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to global health. Extreme weather events, rising temperatures and sea levels are worsening non-communicable diseases (NCDs), threatening food and water security, and cutting people off from healthcare when they need it most. Since the start of the 21st century, heat alone has killed around half a million people every year, on average.
But the climate crisis does not affect everyone equally. The risks are different if you are pregnant, manage a chronic condition, or live in a region vulnerable to climate change. Our research seeks to improve our understanding of these different risks. Working with communities, we develop practical solutions to protect people across some of the geographies most affected by climate change, including the Pacific region, Indian subcontinent, and beyond.
In doing so, we aim to help create a climate-resilient future where where health and wellbeing is prioritised and strengthened for generations to come.
Helping create healthier beginnings through Food is Medicine
Novo Nordisk Foundation is supporting research that could transform how nutritious food is integrated into pregnancy care.
Preconception care: Building a stronger foundation for women’s lifelong health
News / Opinion piece
Webinar series: Digital health & AI readiness in primary care systems