Our Story

For over 22 years the Outer East and Inner East Primary Care Partnerships (PCPs) worked across the Eastern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne supporting their partners to come together to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities. The Well grew and developed over many years and was officially launched in 2018. Its evolution was guided by the PCPs experience of working with their partners, all who had slightly different ways of looking at and responding to similar health and wellbeing issues.

The PCPs saw an opportunity for creating a resource that assisted people to think about these issues in a similar way. The aim was to create an online space where people could go to ‘Learn’ about and ‘Plan’ to respond to a local health and wellbeing issue; where they were encouraged to ‘Share’ their wisdom and ‘Connect’ with each other. The PCPs continued to invest time and resources in developing The Well because they believed in its potential to unify the many efforts across the East to improve health outcomes for local people.

The PCPs transitioned to the North Eastern Public Health Unit (NEPHU) on 1 July 2022. NEPHU is looking forward to continuing to grow and evolve The Well, to create a valued resource for all their stakeholders working in community health and wellbeing across the north eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

How did we get here?

The PCPs began by talking, talking, talking with their partners to establish what it was that they really needed and would use. The first effort was the paper-based ‘Integrated Population Health Planning and Evaluation Resource’ - what a mouthful! Since then the development of The Well has been slowly evolving and changing as the PCPs came to better understand their niche in the world of partnerships, collaboration and technology.

NEPHU is now ready to infuse The Well with new life, wisdom and purpose. We want to grow The Well community and support you to come together to Learn, Plan, Share and Connect. The future of The Well depends on its community - the more you share with us the more valuable The Well will become for all to draw upon.

Our Team

The lead organisations in the development, roll-out and maintenance of The Well:

OEPCP
Outer East Primary Care Partnership

The Outer East Primary Care Partnership (OEPCP) was one of 28 Primary Care Partnerships in Victoria. Our partners included health and community organisations in the local government areas of Knox, Maroondah and Yarra Ranges.

The vision of the OEPCP was to “build an innovative, inclusive and reflective partnership that plans, collaborates and advocates with the community to improve health and wellbeing and reduce inequities”.
IEPCP
Inner East Primary Care Partnership

The Inner East Primary Care Partnership (IEPCP) aimed to build strong partnerships across the Inner East of Melbourne to improve the health and wellbeing of residents in Boroondara, Manningham, Monash, and Whitehorse.

These strong partnerships with their stakeholders enabled the IEPCP to lead collaborative prevention and service improvement across the sector, fostering healthy communities and delivering equitable and positive outcomes to these communities.

Our Experts and Academics

The Well contains comprehensive research papers that have been produced specifically for The Well. They have been reviewed by academic and subject-matter experts, so you can rest assured that the information you’ll find is relevant and reliable. Please note that due to the dynamic nature of the content contained in this research paper, a number of revisions may have occurred since the resource was academically reviewed. We assure that any revisions made are aligned to the original content of the author and reviewer.

Family Violence

Primary Author: Sophie Allen - Inner East Primary Care Partnership
Local Review: Women's Health East
Academic Review: Professor Bob Pease - Professor of Critical Social Work, Chair of Social Work in the School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University
Preventing Alcohol Harms

Primary Author and Academic Review: Professor John Toumbourou - Professor and Chair in Health Psychology at Deakin University; Honourary Senior Research Fellow at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
Health Literacy

Primary Author: Kelly Naughton – Outer East Primary Care Partnership
Food Security

Primary Author: Meg Montague - Social Policy, Research & Facilitation Services
Subject Expert Review: Nourish Food Fairness Network Outer East
Mental Health

Primary Author: Sophie Allen – Inner East Primary Care Partnership
Academic Review: Dr Melissa Petrakis - Lecturer and Coordinator Health and Mental Health Unit, Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Science, Monash University
Obesity

Preliminary Author: Bonnie Rosen – Symplan Consulting
Primary Authors and Academic Review: Dr Penny Love, Dr Kristy Bolton, Ms Jill Whelan, Dr Erin Smith - World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, Deakin University
Healthy Ageing

Primary Author and Expert Review: National Ageing Research Institute (NARI).

Our Partners

We would like to thank our partners who have worked closely with us to translate the original concept of The Well into the dynamic place it is today. The participants involved in developing The Well were: