Background:

The benefits of intersectoral collaboration and community partnerships has been theorised as an important component in achieving health equity. Noted benefits of partnerships include increased coordination, reduced duplication, and utilising organisations with diverse skills and resources to redress the social determinants of health across multiple and diverse sectors.  Sexual and reproductive health promotion partnership work in the absence of comprehensive government policy and planning, might be characterised as ‘nudging the state’ to uphold rights for disadvantaged population groups, by insisting it remains on the health policy agenda despite lack of government input and associated funding.

This paper will explore the efficacy of governance and leadership structures
inherent in multi-agency partnerships, such as Women Health West’s Action for Equity: A Sexual and Reproductive Health Plan for Melbourne’s West 2013-2017. It will also highlight the opportunities and challenges inherent in managing partnership work within diminished funding environments.

Methods:

A social network analysis approach to evaluate partnerships in Action for Equity  gauges the effectiveness of partnership work in the regional plan. Social Network Analysis using quantitative methods will examine concepts such as network ties and reciprocity between members of a partnership.

Results/Discussions:

 Preliminary evaluation indicators show that there is increased commitment from multi-agency partners to a range of sexual and reproductive health promotion work when they are coordinated and driven by a regional partnership such as Action for Equity. 

The results from surveys and social network data analysis highlight that having a regional plan, which is governed and driven by a partnership of senior managers increases sexual and reproductive health programs and services in our region, which leads to improved health outcomes for disadvantaged communities in Melbourne’s west..

Conclusions/implications:

Results of the social network analysis approach to evaluating Action for Equity’s regional partnership will provide evidence of the effectiveness of partnership approaches to health promotion.