CONSUMERS AND COMMUNITY
Working alongside consumers and community members in a person-centred , responsive way helps ensure our services truly meet the diverse needs of our community .
Community participation and engagement is embedded across all levels of our organisation .
We proudly partner with consumers and community members on committees , in working groups , research , programs and events to better understand their needs , and design , deliver and promote our services .
This year , facilitating greater consumer participation in program development , improving our reporting , launching our Merri-wide Consumer Engagement Committee pilot and continuing to deliver innovative health prevention programs that engage target communities were our priorities .
Improving our reporting
We report our community engagement activities quarterly to track our performance and identify areas for improvement .
Staff report using the International Association for Public Participation ( IAP2 ) Public Participation Spectrum ( slightly adapted ).
This also enables us to monitor how deeply we engage along the spectrum of inform to empower .
inform consult involve co-design empower
What did we achieve ?
updated our reporting tool to make it easier for staff to submit activities and saw a significant and consistent increase in reporting
Total engagement activities reported
600 566
474 459
18.9 % increase in reported engagement activities from 2022
captured new data on newsletter distribution and our social media reach
61 % of activities directly engaged consumers or community members
Where can we improve ?
supporting staff to report all activities and provide relevant information is an ongoing challenge
What ’ s next ?
running interactive training sessions to diverse Merri Health teams to help build their reporting capacity
exploring different ways to measure our impact
2020 2021 2022 2023
Engagement activity types 2023
63 % inform
6 consult
16 involve
13 co-design
2 % empower
* Note , reporting is by calendar year . Currently we do not collect individual participant data . One person may be represented multiple times , particularly where activities are re-occurring .
30 Partnering for prevention and better health