Industry Training and Support

This industry training toolkit provides tools and resources to help communicate, influence and inspire active living outcomes.

On this page, you can access our:

• Introductory Training Module
• Capability building slide deck
• Walkshop guide
• Organisational commitment
• Design guide
• Support for building positive community relationships.

Introductory Training Module

You can start by downloading our Introductory Training Module and obtaining your certificate of completion. It will take about 20 minutes.

The training module can help you:

• improve your understanding of the Healthy Active by Design approach
• discuss the link between health and planning
• identify ways to apply Healthy Active by Design in your work
• navigate the Healthy Active by Design digital toolkit.

Your certificate of completion can give you a boost for credibility with colleagues and decision makers when you present on how to improve healthy built and natural environments using our resources.

You can also share your certificate digitally with your networks.

Capability building slide deck

This slide deck has been created for you to present Healthy Active by Design principles to your audiences. This can include colleagues, decision makers, elected leaders and community members.

The slide deck provides a compelling evidence base, narrative and messaging to influence decision-making, investment and advocacy. You can use the slide deck to upskill and train others in applying active living principles to built environment outcomes.

You can use the slides to build a collective understanding of the importance of healthy design principles and achieve a collaborative approach toward shared measures of success within your organisation. This resource helps make your job easier!

The slides are arranged into different sections, from which you can select those most relevant to your audience and purpose:

• to train others and establish collaborative ways of working across council for shared measures of success
• to communicate with and influence decision makers
• to build relationships with and gain support from your local community.

Slides include materials on:

• the benefits of design and delivery for healthy built environments
• narrative and messaging using a public health lens for built environment outcomes
• overcoming barriers and challenges for implementation and communication
• evidence to help support advocacy submissions and budget bids for your work.

Suggested speaking notes are also included.

Walkshop Guide

Our Walkshop Guide can help you develop your own interactive walking workshops.

The Guide gives you the confidence to take the discussion onto the streets. It contains information about:

• pre-Walkshop logistics
• planning your route
• suggested speaking points and Walkshop facilitation
• post-Walkshop activities

Walkshops can provide practical perspective and awareness, inspire change and help gain support for your vision towards a healthier built environment.

You can conduct Walkshops with colleagues, decision makers, elected leaders and/or community members.

The slide deck and Walkshop Guide can be used independently, or as a combined training/awareness session with your audience.

Organisational commitment for healthy environments

This is an initiative for organisations to commit to Healthy Active by Design principles.

Commitment enables you to:

• embed public health into policy, planning and decision-making frameworks  
• position walkability as a core part of strategic planning.

Here’s how it works:

• Ask your CEO (or equivalent) to sign the Statement of Support, to embed Healthy Active by Design principles into council policy, programs and activities.
• You can refer to this when presenting new policies, programs, projects and activities. It will help demonstrate pre-existing permission and internal support for healthy design outcomes.
• We’ll provide you with a digital badge you can upload to your website, and use to promote your commitment.
• You can provide your organisation’s logo, branding and website address for us to display below (‘see who’s committed’).

Reasons to commit:

• align with the Heart Foundation’s brand, reputation and credibility:
• The Heart Foundation is a trusted, for-purpose organisation working to improve heart disease prevention, detection and support for all people living in Australia.
• A key goal underpinning our 25-year vision is to create systems and environments that enable healthy behaviours.
• We work with esteemed researchers across the country to provide an evidence-based approach to healthy urban design.
• send a clear message to your stakeholders, elected leaders, community members and others that your organisation supports evidence-based approaches to design and deliver health and wellbeing outcomes
• apply a health lens to explain the benefits of walkable local neighbourhoods
• provide systems-wide organisational objectives to reduce silos, enhance collaboration and create shared measures of success
• obtain easy access to actionable guidance and robust evidence to support decision-making and advocacy
• gain authority to influence decision-making.

Please note: the Statement of Support does not create any legally binding obligations, nor implies Heart Foundation accreditation, certification or endorsement.

Design Guide

The Healthy Active by Design Guide includes:

• eight evidence-based design features that research has shown support the creation of healthy, happy and active communities
• objectives that outline the importance/rationale of the design features for active living and health based on the extensive review of existing health, active living and planning literature,
• key action areas that support the design principles
• key considerations to ask when creating, preparing, assessing or commenting on a development
  

Building positive community relationships

There are many ways to engage, empower, enable and inspire community members.

We’ve created resources to help you hear from your community, including your silent supporters. These resources are designed to help demonstrate community support for projects and policies that create healthier built environments.

Tools include:

Supporters’ Toolkit

• The toolkit includes messages, social media tiles, QR codes and suggested content to share with your community when engaging about healthy built environment policy and projects.

Community Walkability Checklist

• This provides detailed insights about walkability features in local areas, and specific locations that might need improvement.

Interactive Community Walkability Map

• The map allows community members to explore the walkability of their local area. It acts as an advocacy and behaviour change tool.

Empower your community to take local action

• We’ve developed a list of suggested activities that community members can take to help improve local areas.

Petition

• We’ve developed a petition for your local community to lend their voice to support improved walkability in their local neighbourhood.
• You can use this evidence of community support in your advocacy efforts for designs, as well as budget and funding requests to state and federal government.
• Petition responses are provided to the Heart Foundation. We de-identify and share results with you for advocacy purposes.

Fact sheets about heart healthy neighbourhoods

• Our Community Walkability landing page has a series of fact sheets to help create greater community awareness about the different features of walkability
  

Get in touch

Please get in touch with any queries, or to explore opportunities for collaboration.

Email to: HealthyActivebydesign@heartfoundation.org.au