St Vincent’s Goodman Urban Health Hub
Designing an innovative Model of Care for community mental health.
The problem
For people experiencing mental health concerns, finding the right support can be difficult. Health systems can be fragmented and hard to navigate, particularly when distress is compounded by circumstances such as trauma, social isolation or housing insecurity. When timely, safe and empathetic help is hard to find, people may turn to a hospital Emergency Department or not seek help at all. Emergency care remains essential when needed, but these busy clinical environments can exacerbate rather than ease a person’s distress.
St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney is developing the Goodman Urban Health Hub (UHH) as a community-focussed response to this challenge. Located in the former Green Park Hotel in Darlinghurst, one block from the hospital, the UHH will offer a welcoming non-clinical place where people can find human connection and practical support. It will help people access support informed by lived experience, while providing clear pathways to acute care or other services when needed.
Our approach
Following the successful UHH Innovation Forum in March 2025, St Vincent’s re-engaged the UNSW Innovation Hub in 2026 to facilitate the development of Model of Care recommendations for the new Hub. The Model of Care will be the guiding framework for how the UHH delivers the most appropriate care to the people walking through its doors.
The Innovation Hub is leading a staged process of discovery, consultation, validation and synthesis, working as the conduit between St Vincent’s, representative community groups that will access the services, the project’s academic leads, Kath Thorburn and Brett Bellingham from the UNSW International Centre for Future Health Systems, and a flexible interdisciplinary team of UNSW experts. This process ensures that the perspectives and needs of the communities who will access the Hub’s services inform the design and development of the model from the outset.
The process brings together peer workers with lived experience of mental health, clinicians, community members, hospital and operational specialists, alongside expertise from across UNSW, including inclusive and accessible design, sensory design and trauma-informed care.
The outcome
The project is currently underway, with the Model of Care recommendations being developed through an ongoing consultation and design process, led by the Innovation Hub.
The approach is helping St Vincent’s explore how a new mental health service could work in practice while ensuring that the experiences and expertise of the people who will use and deliver the service are central to its development.
The Model of Care will provide the foundation for a subsequent Service and Operational Plan to bring the Hub to life. This work is also informing the development of the physical space, with the model needing to respond both to the needs of the service and the heritage requirements of the historic Green Park Hotel.
Importantly, the Urban Health Hub will test a new approach to mental health support that could potentially be adapted and scaled across the St Vincent’s network and beyond into other parts of the country.
Project partners
The Urban Health Hub is philanthropically funded through the Goodman Foundation and St Vincent’s Curran Foundation philanthropic donors, with the Innovation Hub engaged to support the design of its Model of Care. The project builds on a longstanding relationship between UNSW and St Vincent’s and demonstrates the value of universities collaborating with external partners to solve complex real-world challenges.
Work with us
The UNSW Innovation Hub tackles diverse problem-solving projects, varying in size, complexity and subject matter. We specialise in complex challenges that require collaboration, a design-led approach, and that can’t be addressed by a single discipline.
If you have a project proposal or potential partnership that you would like to discuss, please get in touch.
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