The impact of the women’s health service funding uplift across 2022-2023

In May 2022, the Victorian Government announced additional funding to the Women’s Health Program totalling of $19.4 million dollars for the 2022–2024 period, administered across the Victorian Women’s Health Program (Department of Health) and the Workforce Capacity-Building Project (Department of Families, Fairness and Housing). The funding uplift supported our sector to significantly enhance and extend our reach and impact across the state in 2022–2023, and to further develop the infrastructure needed to drive long-term change.

As of June 2023, the funding uplift has allowed the sector to employ an additional 67.98 FTE, consisting of 83 new, extended or expanded positions. This includes:

• 32 health promotion, policy or community engagement staff

• 19 bilingual health educators or multicultural health promotion staff

• 10 training and capacity-building staff

• 8 research and evaluation staff 

• 5 communications staff

• 5 managers

• 4 administration and corporate services staff

The workforce boost was enhanced by the strengthening of our infrastructure and internal operating systems, resulting in: 

• increased capacity across all health promotion priority areas

• strengthened organisational capacity to deliver

• enhanced research, evidence-building and advocacy

• extended, expanded and new best and promising practice projects

• capacity-building for more workers and enhanced workforces

• enhanced communications to reach more people in more meaningful ways

• strengthened foundations for meaningful
  long-term evaluation.

As a result of the funding uplift across 2022–2023, the women’s health sector was able to undertake significant work to put in place the people, plans and systems needed to deliver effectively and efficiently on our priority issues across 2023-2024.