The Radical Guide to Collaboration is based on the hard learnings and personal stories of a team of six people across three very different organisations in Australia who came together to find systems-level solutions for community health challenges. We called this guide radical because unlike most guides on collaboration we’re openly sharing what went wrong in our project, what our hard lessons were and how others can avoid them. We’ve tried to get beyond motherhood statements and surface sentiments to talk about the sticky, challenging reality of working closely with other human beings who may have different backgrounds, languages, needs, pressures and agendas.
Lifestyle-related chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and lung cancer are already killing twice as many people as malnutrition and every single infectious disease combined.* Four out of five chronic disease deaths occur in disadvantaged communities*.
Solving this issue requires more than just better access to health services. Research has shown that whilst healthcare itself is an important part of creating healthy communities, healthy lifestyle choices and socio-economic factors like employment, housing and social inclusion make up 70% of health outcomes*.
[1] D. R. Williams, M. V. Costa, A. O. Odunlami & S. A. Mohammed., ‘Moving Upstream: How Interventions That Address the Social Determinants of Health Can Improve Health and Reduce Disparities’, Journal of Public Health Management Practice, 14/6 (2008), 8.
[1] M. Rosato et al., ‘Community participation: lessons for maternal, newborn, and child health’, The Lancet, 372 (2008), 969
[1] The Royal Children’s Hospital, Place-based Initatives Transforming Communities (2012) https://www.rch.org.au/uploadedFiles/Main/Content/ccch/CCCH_Place-based_initiatives_report.pdf>, 4, accessed 3 Feb. 2018.
Changing the conversation around chronic disease and community wellbeing through advocacy and partnership
Building coordinated movements around specific local problems, with collective impact and systems-thinking
Mentoring & capacity-building existing community health organisations through our consultancy services
We started off working with vulnerable people 14 years ago. Seven years later, we started working with change-makers and community projects. Now we are working with whole communities on a systems level.
OHO's mission is no less than
Health for All.
OHO is the largest organisation of its kind in the world and a registered associate of the United Nations DPI