The aggressive marketing of breast-milk substitutes and unhealthful foods and beverages contests efforts to promote healthy diets and directly contributes to worsening nutrition. In 2020, the WHO Regional Committee for the Western Pacific endorsed a Regional Action Framework on Protecting Children from the Harmful Impact of Food Marketing. The Framework urges governments to establish or strengthen policies to restrict such marketing and outlines 10 recommended actions, relating to the policy framework, stakeholder consultation, advocacy and communication, and monitoring and evaluation. Subsequently, the WHO Regional Office commissioned the development of operational materials to support Member States to implement the Framework. This included an operational manual and training course, which will be released in 2025. These materials provide technical guidance to achieve the objectives set out in the Regional Action Framework, to understand the problem, policy solutions and the recommended actions for progressing food marketing policy based on the national context. The materials are relevant to all those who are interested in progressing food marketing policies. The content has been specifically developed for staff at relevant government ministries or departments, and non-government organisations and academics. This presentation will describe the process of developing the Framework and operational materials, provide an overview of the materials and available tools for policy development and implementation, and highlight future steps for strengthening food marketing policies in the region.

Background
Gambling is a major public health issue in Australia, disproportionately affecting socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. In 2022, Australians recorded the world’s highest per capita gambling losses, totalling $25 billion. These losses are linked to financial stress, mental ill-health, family breakdown, and reduced productivity. In Fairfield, New South Wales, daily poker machine losses reached $1.9 million in 2024, despite a regulatory cap introduced in 2018. Recent data show gambling participation among 30% of 12–17-year-olds and 46% of 18–19-year-olds.

Aim
This initiative aimed to strengthen collective capacity and generate local evidence to address the social and structural determinants of gambling harm in Fairfield, employing a transdisciplinary, place-based approach to inform service planning, policy and enhance community responses.

Methods
A Collective Impact framework guided the initiative following a 2018 Fairfield forum. Activities included: (i) cross-sector meetings; (ii) piloting a co-designed screening tool in general practice and community services, supported by an online resource and training to build screening capacity; (iii) awareness campaigns during GambleAware Week; and (iv) targeted training for frontline staff.

Findings and Outcomes
Service providers were engaged but lacked confidence to address gambling harm. The Fairfield City Health Alliance Gambling Working Group, established in 2019, includes local government, health, social and multicultural services, and academics. In 2020, a co-designed gambling harm screening tool was successfully implemented in general practice and community settings. Screening results showed 60% of 130 participants reported higher levels of gambling-related harm than found in prevalence studies. Enablers included integration with existing work, online tools, and staff empowerment. Barriers included unclear referral pathways, complex responses, and limited funding. The initiative raised awareness and supported ongoing collaboration.

Future Actions
Future work will refine pathways, scale model, prioritise early intervention. In 2025, mixed-methods youth sub-study with surveys, focus groups explored gambling attitudes amongst 16–24-year-olds.

How can play contribute to a Public Health Strategy? We know play is great for children, but it can also be the key to stronger communities and better public health. In 2025, Play Illawarra in collaboration with Office of Sport, University of Wollongong and local councils and community centres, undertook an Active Pla(y)ce making project that utilised the principles of ‘place-making’ to promote equitable and inclusive use of active play environments in the Illawarra to build healthy, more connected communities. Four community pop up and play events were held at varied locations valuating different ways of utilising play spaces in particular regard to lower socio-economic areas and older children’s play. The events were attended by 520+ people, 55% identifying as female and 12% identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Our evaluations and conversations with families at these events identified that cost of living and lack of awareness about community events and children's support services such as playgroups and youth drop ins were key barriers to families participating in community events. We addressed this by enhancing our Play Illawarra website (an online playground directory) with a list of free community activities that support children and families including fortnightly newsletters with playground highlights, suggested events and play inspiration and free resources. By having a central platform for families to access information plus a local reminder of our resources, we encourage play and connection in the Illawarra with the aim to improve public health by creating a more connected community.

Children's health is profoundly shaped by social determinants such as poverty, housing instability, of insecurity, and quality education. These factors contribute to adverse childhood experiences impacting physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Addressing these upstream determinants is critical in early intervention. Active In-Betweens is a, place-based, after-school and trauma-informed outdoor play program for 8–12-year-olds, facilitated by health promotion workers from Healthy Cities Australia across five socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in the Illawarra. Active In-Betweens fosters healthy lifestyles through active play, healthy eating and social skills that contribute to good health, resilience and positive self-esteem in a supportive community-based environment.

Program evaluation highlights strong outcomes:
94% of participants feel more socially connected
84% report being more physically active
91% intend to apply what they've learned.

Further, an economic evaluation using the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB) over six months with 200 children revealed net benefits of $877,391 and a benefit-cost ratio of 6.68—demonstrating that for every $1 invested, the program delivers $6.68 in social and economic value. This presentation will explore the program’s design, implementation, and impact, offering insights into the success of place-based, free after-school initiatives in mitigating health inequities. Active In-Betweens serves as a scalable model for addressing social determinants of health among pre-teens in underserved communities.

Problem
Generation Vape, Australia’s largest vaping research project, shows that teachers and parents are worried about adolescent vaping and the impact in schools. The burden of addressing this complex issue in schools falls disproportionately on teachers, who feel ill-prepared to manage this problem. Despite high concern, teachers report a lack of comprehensive or inconsistent school vaping management strategies, highlighting the need for evidence-informed action.

Response
To ensure real-world and timely impact in school settings, Generation Vape data was used to foster meaningful engagement between NSW Health, the NSW Department of Education (DoE) and researchers. Data translation initiatives included briefings to key NSW Ministers and staff as well as the DoE’s Drugs Committee to share insights and discuss knowledge gaps. Research findings were shared at a cross-sector roundtable event with health experts and school leaders from across the education sector. The data was also used to develop NSW Health’s ‘Vaping Toolkit’, a series of vaping resources for young people, parents and schools.

Impact
The successful translation of evidence into the education sector has resulted in updated vaping learning sequences in the NSW PDHPE curriculum and amendments to the DoE’s school policies and approaches to vaping. The roundtable event resulted in actionable recommendations to address vaping and support students and school staff. The vaping toolkit has been licensed to other state/territory health departments and has contributed to increased knowledge and awareness of vaping harms.

Conclusion
While significant progress has been achieved in the education sector, vaping is a community-wide problem. A whole-of-government strategy is essential to reduce access to vapes and support teachers. Generation Vape demonstrates how research, when translated in real time and supported by strong cross-sector leadership, can drive meaningful change. This model offers a blueprint for addressing other fast-moving public health challenges through collaboration, relevance, and real-world impact.

As food insecurity, climate stress, and cost-of-living pressures rise across Australia, siloed public systems are struggling to respond. A 2024 study by the University of Wollongong, Healthy Cities Australia (HCA), and Food Fairness Illawarra (FFI) found that over one-third (38%) of households in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions experience food insecurity, including 30% of families with children. Yet only 23% of severely food-insecure households accessed emergency food relief, exposing a gap between community needs and available support. These challenges are partly driven by fragmented food, health, and social policies, particularly in areas lacking formal food governance structures.

FFI provides a compelling example of how local leadership and cross-sector collaboration can contribute to healthier, more resilient communities. Powered by HCA, FFI is a regional coalition that brings together councils, community organisations, academics, producers, health services, and food relief providers to strengthen food security, sustainability, and equity across the Illawarra and Shoalhaven. By convening and connecting stakeholders, FFI addresses gaps in coordination and policy often left by state and federal systems.

Over the past two decades, FFI has led key initiatives including including coordinating a regional food relief response during COVID-19; helping secure a national food rescue organisation now diverting over 700,000 kg of edible food from landfill to those in need and curating the region’s only Fair Food Directory to connect residents with local, ethical, and low-cost food options.

FFI shows that regional coalitions are essential infrastructure in building climate-resilient, health-promoting cities. These agile, trusted networks are well placed to drive lasting change. FFI highlights the value of investing in community-led coalitions as a scalable public health strategy to strengthen local food systems and improve population health.

Global food systems have rapidly transformed due to technological advancements, market reforms, and trade liberalisation, significantly increasing agricultural productivity. While these changes have significantly increased agricultural productivity to meet the demands of a growing global population, these gains have come at considerable cost to environmental sustainability, nutrition, and public health. Climate change further exacerbates these impacts, threatening food security, widening socio-economic disparities, undermining food safety and facilitating the spread of infectious diseases and foodborne illnesses. This interplay between environmental and health pressures creates feedback loops that contribute to what is termed a global syndemic, i.e. a convergence of crises involving undernutrition, obesity, and climate change that reinforce each other and jeopardise global health.
Despite increasing recognition of the interconnected risks linking food systems, public health, and environmental sustainability, significant gaps remain in system-level research and policy frameworks that capture the dynamic interactions among food production, consumption, and public health outcomes, particularly within the broader context of socioeconomic and ecological systems. Furthermore, current approaches often fail to incorporate the complex feedbacks, trade-offs, and synergies that shape long-term health resilience and equity.
This presentation, therefore, aims to explore and integrate the environmental and health dimensions of food system transformation through a systematic literature review and expert consultations. It will: i) analyse the connections between food system components and health outcomes tied to the global syndemic; ii) identify recurring patterns and trade-offs in these interactions; and iii) evaluate existing interventions and policies addressing health and sustainability within food systems.
Through this analysis, it proposes a systems framework that illustrates the dynamics between food system transformations and public health outcomes, categorising key components and drivers. These findings highlight policy-relevant interventions to promote healthier, more sustainable food systems that support both human and planetary health in the face of global challenges.

Background
Childhood is a critical time for establishing healthy eating habits, and schools provide an ideal intervention setting. Despite initiatives like the NSW Healthy School Canteen Strategy, Australian children fall short of dietary recommendations. Food insecurity affects about one-third of Australian households, with many children attending school hungry or undernourished. School lunch provision programs, common internationally and recently established in Tasmania, have improved diet quality, increased attendance, and enhanced food security. This partnership pilot project will introduce a cooked nutritious lunch program for Year 1 primary school students in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area of the Illawarra, NSW. This presentation will report on baseline findings including parent and staff perception of the program, student fruit and vegetable intake and food insecurity. Food liking of the meals offered so far will also be reported.
Methods
Cooked on-site lunches will be provided three days per week during Terms 2 and 3, 2025. Data collection includes online questionnaires for parents, caregivers, and staff to assess program benefits and challenges, in-class discussions and weekly menu liking assessments from children.
Results
Sixteen parents (35%) and five staff completed the baseline questionnaire. Parents looked forward to their child trying new foods (100%), having a healthy filling lunch (69%) and accessing free meals (44%). Concerns included children not liking (44%) and not trying (38%); 44% reported no concerns. Children met fruit (M=2.25 serves/day, SD=1.13), but not vegetable intake (M=1.20 serves/day, SD=0.86) guidelines. Two families reported food insecurity. All staff cited perceived benefits such as access to healthy food, improved behaviour, and social connections. Perceived challenges included sourcing skilled volunteers (100%), meal uptake (80%), food waste (60%), time constraints (60%), and allergies (40%). Most children reported liking the meals offered.
Conclusion
Baseline findings demonstrate strong parental and staff support, with some concerns around food preferences and logistics.

Healthy environments help children develop well physically, emotionally, and socially. Young children spend a lot of time close to home, which means their local neighbourhood helps to shape their daily experiences. Much of Australia’s population growth is happening in growth area suburbs located on the urban fringe, with many young families moving to these suburbs because of relative housing affordability and more space (e.g., larger houses and backyards). However, these areas often have fewer essential services and infrastructure than inner-city areas, raising concerns about how health-promoting these areas are for families with young children.

The Early Data to Decisions Project is a mixed methods study funded by VicHealth. In collaboration with local government, we aimed to identify built environment features that support optimal early child development in different neighbourhood settings. To do this, we used linked data from around 47,000 children aged approximately five years old captured in the Australian Early Development Census. We asked parents living in one growth area of Melbourne, about what they perceive as important neighbourhood built environment features for raising young children and why.

We found that living in the poorest neighbourhoods was strongly related to early childhood development, regardless of whether it was located in Melbourne’s inner city, middle ring, outer ring, or growth area (urbanicity). Housing, public open space, and access to early childhood education and care were consistently related to early childhood development, and these associations may differ depending on the level of neighbourhood disadvantage and urbanicity combined.

Parents emphasised the importance of having high-quality local amenities, like libraries, parent groups, and playgroups. While parks within walking distance were used regularly, using a car was crucial for reaching other destinations. Governments and services should prioritise high-quality amenities like public open spaces and early childhood education and care services.

When and how complementary food is introduced sets the foundation for oral motor development, as well as lifelong eating behaviours, and dietary patterns. Yet current food policy frameworks do not account for this critical window and fail to protect infants and young children (IYC) from potential harms. In addition, commercial pureed ready-to-use squeeze infant food pouches have emerged as a ubiquitous but nutritionally inadequate and heavily marketed complementary food. Evidence demonstrates that squeeze pouches do not meet requirements for composition in dietary guidelines for IYC, are commonly used by parents and carers and marketed as healthy and convenient, but little is known about their potential long-term consequences for feeding development, speech and dental outcomes. This paper examines the regulation of squeeze pouches within the broader context of regulating commercial milk formulas, IYC foods and drinks in Australia. A content analysis of Australian and international policy documents was undertaken, relevant to squeeze pouches.
The results of the policy analysis highlighted the limitations of Australia’s fragmented food regulatory system to protect the optimum diets of these highly vulnerable age groups, and recognise the time, education and resources that enable breastfeeding and feeding healthy foods to infants and toddlers. Given the current review of the FSANZ Act and cessation of the Marketing in Australia of Infant Formula Agreement, this research points to the urgent need for a coherent regulatory framework for IYC that spans the first five years of life. The authors propose new principles and criteria that are precautionary, functional and social, in addition to nutritional, that should apply to all commercial milk formulas and complementary foods for young children, including squeeze pouches. The study also provides a framework for improved governance and further research to support the decisions of policymakers and health professionals in IYC feeding.

Background: The rising prevalence of e-cigarette use, particularly among young people, has become a significant public health concern in Australia. Statistics show that vaping rates among individuals aged 14 and older have tripled between 2019 and 2022/23, with an alarming four-fold increase among those aged 18-24. Vaping amongst young people is closely linked to stress, social pressures and misinformation, underscoring the need for targeted and innovative public health solutions. The Liverpool and Fairfield Local Government Areas (LGAs), characterised by socio-economic disadvantage and cultural diversity, face unique challenges in addressing issues like vaping. This study aims to examine the current rates of vaping and the associated knowledge and attitudes of young people in the Liverpool and Fairfield LGA’s as part of a broader systems-based project.
Methods: Surveys and focus groups were conducted with young people aged 12 to 24 from the Liverpool and Fairfield LGA’s. Preliminary survey data were analysed using frequencies and descriptive statistics, processed through REDCap and the focus group data was thematically analysed.
Results: N = 60 young people from the Liverpool and Fairfield LGA’s have participated in the survey. Preliminary results indicate that 58.9% of respondents have used e-cigarettes, with a notable trend of daily use and most having vaped for over 2 years. Further to this, preliminary focus group data (n = 3) has revealed key themes related to addiction and dependence, knowledge of actual and potential harms and the perceived physical and mental benefits of vaping.
Conclusion: Findings indicate that vaping is deeply embedded in the lives of many young people. They highlight the urgent need for youth-informed, locally tailored, systems-based responses to reduce vaping harms and support healthier choices.