Engagement strategy tips
Seeking to involve consumers in your project? Here are some factors to take into consideration.
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Download Health Consumers NSW organisational publications, papers and reports.
Reconciliation Action Plan – Reflect
Our inaugural Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (August 2025 – July 2026), or RAP, evolves HCNSW’s journey to build stronger relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, embed cultural respect across our work, and ensure self-determination and equity for First Nations Australians in NSW’s health system.
Collaborate & Connect: For Non-Indigenous Organisations to Better Engage with First Nations Young People
Resources and tools to help non-Indigenous staff and organisations approach, plan, design, and deliver authentic and effective engagement with First Nations young people. Co-created by young First Nations collaborators, AWCH and HCNSW.
Single Digital Patient Record: What do health consumers and consumer organisations think?
Our March 2025 report – Single Digital Patient Record: What do health consumers and consumer organisations think? – provides key insights into health service users’ and consumer organisations’ expectations and concerns around the Single Digital Patient Record (SDPR). We consulted with our members about this culminating in webinars and online consultations in November and December 2024.
NSW Local Health Districts and Public Health Networks maps
These maps show the areas and borders of all Local Health Districts (LHDs) and Public Health Networks (PHNs) in NSW. We aim to keep all information up-to-date, but if you notice out-of-date information, please let us know.
NSW Local Health Districts and Public Health Networks list
This list shows addresses, contact details, and websites for all Local Health Districts (LHDs) and Public Health Networks (PHNs) in NSW. We aim to keep all information up-to-date, but if you notice out-of-date information, please let us know.
Celebrating a decade of HCNSW
In late 2022, we partnered with the Critical Intelligence Unit of the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) to gather experiences from people with long-COVID in NSW. Our resulting report documents the understanding of long-COVID patients of their experiences.
HCNSW Strategic Plan 2023 – 2026
Health Consumers NSW is proud to present our Strategic Plan for 2023 to 2026, which sets out how we will move forward, building on our past successes. The plan came into effect on 1 July 2023 and lays out our strategic direction for the next three years.
Long-COVID report details patient experiences in NSW
In late 2022, we partnered with the Critical Intelligence Unit of the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) to gather experiences from people with long-COVID in NSW. Our resulting report documents the understanding of long-COVID patients of their experiences.
Privacy and Personal Information Protection Policy
Health Consumers NSW (HCNSW) is committed to protecting the privacy of individuals in the way it collects, uses, discloses, and manages their personal information. In this regard, we act in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cwlth). If collection involves health information about individuals, then HCNSW must also comply with the Health Records Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW).
Better Care, Better Outcomes
In August 2021, Health Consumers NSW (HCNSW) and the Physical Disability Council of NSW (PDCN) ran a joint, one-month online consumer survey to try to understand peoples’ experience of communication difficulties in NSW hospitals.
Consumer Leaders in Health Collective – Statement of Aims
Driving Consumer Partnership in Health Service Design, Delivery and Evaluation. This Statement of Aims has been developed by the Consumer Leaders in Health Collective.
Navigating Telehealth: – the patients’ perspective
In 2021, we released a new report, Navigating Telehealth: – the patients’ perspective and an accompanying background report, calling on decision-makers to include patients, families and carers in discussions and decisions about permanent telehealth services in Australia.
What can you expect at your age? An ageism in health care project
OWN and HCNSW decided to partner to investigate the issue of ageism in the health care sector in NSW. The project has its genesis in anecdotal evidence from the many members of HCNSW and OWN NSW, about instances of ageism they experienced in their dealings with the health care sector.
Celebrating a Decade of Health Consumers NSW
Hard to believe – but our organisation turned 10, and we celebrated this decade of passionate voices, helping hands, bright minds, getting involved, generous hearts and coming together with a special 10-year publication: A decade of HCNSW. A decade of HCNSW was launched at our online Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2021 on 19 November.
Voluntary Assisted Dying Position Statement
Health Consumers NSW supports all people facing decisions about end-of-life care being able to access the type of care they want and need, including end of life and palliative care, as well as spiritual and pastoral care.
Healthcare visiting guide
During the pandemic there have been some negative, unintended and significant consequences to patients and families navigating a very different health care landscape. To continue to combat the threat of the virus together, and using the hindsight built from experience so far, we have engaged with leading consumer representatives to support the decision-making process.
Consumer-pharmaceutical industry relationships: Building trust and transparency
Health Consumers NSW partnered with the Evidence, Policy & Influence Collaborative at the Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney and Consumer Health Forum of Australia to host a workshop on 11 March 2020 to discuss the risks and benefits of partnering with the pharmaceutical industry.
Cost of health care: Consumer Stories of Patient Experience and Economic Disadvantage in NSW
New research, commissioned by the NSW Council of Social Services (NCOSS) and undertaken by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) and us, shows the relationship between economic disadvantage and patient experience of health services across New South Wales. The research, and the patient stories we collected, focus on the costs, delays and expectations experienced by patients of General Practitioners, private and public dental, and medical specialist services in NSW.
The Intersections Project: Health Care Insights from People with Intersectional Needs
The Intersections Project is a pilot community engagement initiative that collected health consumer narratives for people with intersectional needs seeking healthcare within the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD).
Involving Health Consumers in Health and Medical Research: Enablers and Challenges from a Consumer Perspective
An outcome of the workshop held on 31 Oct. 2016 by Health Consumers NSW and Research4Me.
Consumer and Community Engagement Model report
Consumer and Community Engagement Model: An outcome of the WentWest– Health Consumers NSW Joint Consumer Engagement Project
