WORKPLACE HEALTH INITIATIVES

Ms SIMMONS (Morialta) (15:37): I rise today to make some comments about workplace health initiatives. This week many of us in this place will take advantage of the provision of flu prevention injections, as will tens of thousands of other employees whose employers facilitate this service, but I wonder how many of us and other South Australians would have flu injections if it was not made so easy for us? I think, sadly, not many.

This government is committed to encouraging people to be healthy through supporting them to take care of their own health, having access to services that can intervene in any health problems as early as possible and having access to health promoting environments. The challenge is to do this by using strategies that have been shown to work.

We acknowledge that workplaces (both government and non-government) play a very important role in helping people to be healthy, and the Rann government strongly supports the concept of workplace health promotion. There are existing programs such as the immunisation against flu injections that we have just been talking about, and these could be expanded. The occupational health and safety system in workplaces ensures that workplaces are safe and healthy. The recent smoke-free legislation change is an example of an initiative to ensure safe and healthy workplaces.

As a member of the Social Development Committee which, last year, completed the inquiry into childhood obesity—it also looked at obesity in general in South Australia—I believe that more could be done through workplaces such as supporting healthy food options and restricting unhealthy food. We also believe that workplaces can help by providing facilities and supports for people to be active: for example, supporting participation in the very successful Tour Down Under community race, simple initiatives such as providing showers, forming sports teams, paying for gym membership, etc. I have been involved in the Parisian walking challenge run by Heart Support (SA). I know that many businesses encourage teams in the City-Bay Fun Run, and I have also participated in those.

Programs such as sport and recreation do have a potential to reduce chronic disease across the population of South Australia. However, I do not believe that the workplace is the best place to conduct other primary health care checks, such as evidence-based screening programs for cervical and bowel cancer. Last year I congratulated BreastScreen SA on its work over many years now. There are risks in undertaking population-based screening programs where a thorough review of the evidence of effectiveness has not occurred. No test is perfect, and there are inevitably false positive and false negative results, with negative psychological impacts on those who receive inaccurate results.

It is also important to emphasise that the cost of screening low-risk populations to the health system can be disproportionate to the benefit. As I have already discussed in this place, screening is best conducted within the primary health care system where multiple health issues can be managed together and the individual is working with a trusted practitioner. I believe that the focus screening and primary health care sector will ensure that there is no costly duplication of testing, and, more importantly, appropriate testing of high-risk groups which improves cost effectiveness.

There also needs to be appropriate routine follow-up of people with positive results. In South Australia we have a well-established primary health care system. It is estimated that 86 per cent of people see their GP at least once a year. As such, GP and primary health care practices are the best place to provide evidence-based population health screening, and the government supports efforts from the workplace to encourage health screening with GPs. However, we do not support the idea of routine health checks through workplaces: we prefer to emphasise that we strongly support workplaces becoming health-promoting environments.

Time expired.