Our Community Engagement Strategy sets out how we will work with patients, consumers and carers to build a strong, inclusive community that ensures fair and equitable health care.
The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) is committed to partnering with patients, consumers, carers and the community to achieve our purpose of advancing health for everyone, every day.
This led us to create In this together, the RMH Community Engagement Strategy 2025-2030.
Read the strategy:
What we did
The Strategy was created in a codesign process to make sure everyone could contribute.
This included a Steering Group that was co-chaired by both a consumer representative and the RMH Director of Patient Experience and Community Engagement. Group membership was evenly distributed between consumer and community members, people with a lived mental health experience and staff representing First Nations, community engagement and cultural diversity teams. The Steering Group was guided by codesign principles to decide the aim and purpose of the project, the project plan and consultation process.
Consultation included people from different backgrounds, cultures and experiences. This included patients, consumers, carers, community members and staff.
The RMH partnered with the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative (AHMC), part of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council, to play a key role in the development of the Strategy. The AHMC led community consultations, which also helped to make sure migrant and refugee voices were included. Bilingual workers and interpreters were offered to help people take part in the consultation, as needed. A survey was also translated into eight different languages.
A codesign workshop brought multiple stakeholders together to reflect on key findings from the consultations and decide on the focus areas for change.
Who we heard from
242 consumers, carers and community members participated via 6 focus groups, survey, interviews and community workshop
69 RMH staff completed a survey
35 consumers, carers, community members and staff participated in a codesign workshop
People from more than 20 diverse cultural backgrounds were represented
Survey data showed participants were:
- From 40 local government areas in Victoria
- Aged between 18-64 years old
- 8.8% identified as part of the LGBTIQA+ community
- 2.7% identified as First Nations
- 45% live with disability and/or mental health challenges
- 41% live with chronic illness
- 14.9% told us they spoke a language other than English at home
- 1.4% told us they experienced housing insecurity