THE WATER INDUSTRY’S ROLE IN HEALTH AND WELLBEING

摘要

The water industry has always had a strong focus on public health. Maintaining water quality is fundamental to our existence, and is one of our most important functions. Beyond this, however, are a range of contemporary public health and wellbeing challenges, to which our industry could make a more meaningful contribution – but to make this contribution, the water industry will need to expand how it thinks. This paper addresses ways in which we can gain new insights by considering how the public health industry is addressing the challenges of today. Public health experts estimate that Victoria is presently experiencing approximately 1,500 avoidable deaths each year. When relative populations are considered, this magnitude has parallels to the crisis Victoria faced in the 1890s, when the state suffered 400 deaths a year from typhoid – a serious public health issue that was also recognised as avoidable. In the 1890s the water industry’s roles in resolving the public health crisis was clear – construct sewers to improve sanitation and reduce the spread of typhoid. But today, when the leading causes of death include heart disease, cancer and respiratory disorders, the role of the water industry is much less obvious. An insight from public health analysts can provide the water industry another lens to look at what it does. Public health analysts see a seven-year difference in life expectancy between the state’s best and worst municipalities, and a 17-year difference in disability-free life years. These gaps exert an economic burden of between $3 billion and $5 billion a year on the state of Victoria, which impacts us all. By unbundling the differences in health and wellbeing between municipal regions, public health experts have found that the largest determinants to health and wellbeing are socioeconomic (40%), behavioural (30%), clinical (20%) and the physical environment (10%). These insights provide us with a different lens to see how the water industry can potentially contribute to health and wellbeing. They move us from thinking about just providing safe water and sanitation services to considering aspects such as our vulnerability programs, education programs and our role in encouraging more people to replace sugary drinks with water. Importantly, these insights also pave the way to provide us with a material measure to quantify a water company’s relative contribution to health and wellbeing, letting us prioritise activities that deliver the greatest social capital to the community.