Australians will benefit from a $37.5 million investment in consumer health literacy and health professional education projects.
The consumer health literacy projects will improve consumers' knowledge to inform their decisions when using medicines and medical services.
The health professional education projects will help Australian health practitioners working across settings to improve the quality use of medicines and medical tests to benefit the people in their care.
Projects funded include (not a complete list, as some grants are still being finalised):
Consumer Health Literacy
- $1.47 million to Asthma Australia to deliver a national asthma health literacy campaign for families of children with asthma, aimed at improving preventative care.
- $1.1 million to Healthily to develop consumer health literacy resource packages in multiple languages for people prescribed osteoporosis medications.
Health Professional Education
- $2.1 million to Advanced Pharmacy Australia to optimise perioperative medicines use in perioperative care.
- $1.87 million to the University of Canberra for a pilot mental health medicines training program supporting people with intellectual and developmental disability to reduce over-medication.
The projects received funding through the Australian Government's Consumer Health Literacy Grant opportunity and the Health Professional Education Grant opportunity under the Quality Use of Diagnostics, Therapeutics and Pathology program.
This program contributes to Australia's National Medicines Policy and the National Strategy for Quality Use of Medicines.
