Health promotion-who, us? Developing health promoting emergency departments

This paper describes the initiation of Victoria's Health Promoting Emergency Departments (HPEDs) Program, involving seven of Melbourne's Emergency Departments (EDs). The Program aims to integrate health promotion into the function of EDs, to complement the clinical and curative emergency care that they already provide. A development phase identified the means of achieving this and involved establishing a multi-disciplinary Steering Committee and engaging health promotion specialists to record the opportunities for health promotion within the ED context. A literature review, and consultations with ED staff (focus groups and surveys) and other stakeholders were conducted. A concept paper was published and the development phase findings were documented, including recommendations on the future of the Program.