City Futures News

The Healthy Built Environments Program (HBEP) has been on tour in rural NSW. We have visited Area Health Service offices in Queanbeyan, Coffs Harbour, Newcastle and Orange.

We have been running workshops to develop the skills of the health workforce in delivering healthy built environments. As part of our visits to the Area Health Services we have also been gathering information about the needs faced by professionals in these regional and rural localities.

This has highlighted many unique challenges which we hope to be able to address as part of the future work of the HBEP.

Other News:

City Futures was successful in the most recent ARC funding round, with Dr Ilan Vizel winning a three years Linkage grant (in partnership with La Trobe University). While none of the other submitted applications were successful, two came in the top band of near misses, one of which (led by A/Prof Bruce Judd, E/Prof Ian Burnley and Dr Hazel Easthope) was awarded an UNSW Gold Star grant of $40,000 to assist the team to further refine the application for re-submission in 2011.

Staff from City Futures were well represented at the recent Australasian Housing Researchers’ Conference in Auckland. Centre Director and Associate Dean (Research) Prof Bill Randolph was invited to give a keynote presentation to the conference attendants, while three staff members and one student gave presentations. A recent graduate from the FBE, Dr Lucy Groenhart, was awarded the Early Career Researcher Award for the paper based on her PhD studies completed as part of a Linkage project awarded to City Futures in 2006. Prof Randolph’s keynote presentation will be made available through the conference website, while the refereed papers will be available in early 2011.