enHealth Council - Strategy & Implementation Plan

National Environmental Health Strategy Implementation Plan

National Environmental Health Strategy Implementation Plan (2000) [PDF, 733k]. [Located on Department of Health and Ageing website]

For the first time Australia has a National Environmental Health Strategy (NEHS). This Strategy calls for a new and actively collaborative approach. The enHealth Council, the national body established to implement the NEHS, was appointed for a three year term. The Inaugural enHealth Council developed the NEHS Implementation Plan, which in effect was the Council business plan for the triennium.

The NEHSIP includes Action Plans directed towards improving:

management practices and decision making ability and increasing the capacity of the environmental health workforce

The Strategy and Implementation Plan highlight the need to increase our capacity in; environmental health infrastructure (eg., workforce, knowledge), environmental health management tools (eg., environmental health impact assessment, legislation, risk assessment and management) and by working on specific environmental health problems facing our nation. However, the real value of the NEHS will only be realised through its implementation, effected by all environmental health stakeholders throughout Australia. This plan provides a holistic framework for organising implementation activities.

The NEHS Implementation Plan was subject to a mid-term (one and a half year) review to assess progress by September 2000. The achievements of the Implementation Plan for the three year period will be assessed during the independent review of the Strategy.