Bridge 4 Health is excited to welcome on board CHASE – Centre for Health through Action on Social Exclusion, from Deakin University, Australia.

Professor Ann Taket, Director of CHASE, shares how action on social exclusion works through collaboration and engagement, on various levels:

Social exclusion can be understood as the inability to participate in the normal activities of life, despite the desire to do so.  It exists in social and cultural as well as economic and political domains. Social exclusion has detrimental effects on health and wellbeing in the short, medium and long term.  The importance of promoting social inclusion is recognised in many significant government initiatives at federal and state level in Australia as well as internationally. Social exclusion is experienced by a wide range of different groups within any society, as well as in a diverse range of situations. Our research includes a diverse range of population groups, with particular focuses on: families and reproductive health, including gendered violence and abuse; disabled people; sexuality; refugees and asylum seekers; poverty and locational disadvantage.

One of the major features of the way CHASE works is through the development of partnerships, with communities and with organisations in the health and human services sector.  Collaborating in research and development in a University-based centre offers mutual advantage. The collaboration itself is important – it breaks down barriers between theory and practice, and encourages positive relationships between health and human services professionals, service users, carers, researchers and communities, producing increased capacity to drive positive social change.

CHASE currently brings together a group of some thirty staff and over 40 doctoral candidates, as well as masters and honours students. The group is multidisciplinary and multiprofessional, including public health, health promotion, health sciences, social work, occupational science and therapy, sociology, anthropology and disability studies. (Professor Ann Taket)

Bridge 4 Health looks forward to future collaboration!

For more information  visit www.deakin.edu.au/health/chase