Western Australia’s health promotion Agency, Healthway has celebrated its 30-year anniversary.
Minister for Health, Roger Cook said that, since 1991, Healthway had supported more than 5,600 organisations with $455 million in grants aimed at promoting and facilitating good health and encouraging healthy lifestyles.
Mr Cook said the Agency, established as part of the Tobacco Control Act (1990), had an initial task to provide alternative funds for sports and arts events that were supported by manufacturers and wholesalers of tobacco products.
He said it was also responsible for promoting good health by supporting research, sporting, arts, community and youth programs that promoted healthy lifestyles.
The Minister said Healthway’s grants programs had since been expanded to target additional priority health issues, such as increasing healthy eating and physical activity, reducing harm from alcohol and improving mental health.
“Other achievements Healthway has contributed to include major policy change in public health such as smoke-free areas, reducing the promotion of unhealthy brands in sport and creating community events and activities that promote positive health,” Mr Cook said.
“It has also supported internationally-recognised health and research projects that impact on policy and practice.”
He said Healthway’s model of working with organisations it funded empowered people to take control of their health by ensuring the environments they lived, worked, learned and played in all supported good health.
“I’d like to congratulate all the Healthway-funded organisations, staff, board and committees who have been involved in creating a healthy WA and I look forward to continuing this work with you,” Mr Cook said.
