Centre Profile
Welcome to the McCaughey Centre, VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing.
The McCaughey Centre aims to build knowledge about the social, economic and environmental foundations of community wellbeing and mental health. A defining feature of all the Centre's research is a commitment to improving social and health equity and reducing health inequalities. The Centre undertakes research, policy development, teaching, workforce development and knowledge translation with a focus on:
- Reducing violence
- Reducing discrimination
- Increasing social participation and inclusion
- Strengthening economic participation and security
- Addressing the impact of climate change on community wellbeing
- Improving intergenerational health and wellbeing
- Improving understanding of knowledge translation and exchange
The Centre’s work takes place in a range of key settings and contexts, including in early years services and schools, workplaces, communities and neighbourhoods, public policy and service delivery agencies and in other culturally diverse contexts.
The Centre hosts a number of major research, policy and knowledge translation initiatives including Community Indicators Victoria, the Cochrane Collaboration Public Health Review Group and the Jack Brockhoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program.
Centre staff have strong multidisciplinary skills and expertise in:
- The development of indicators and other measures of health and wellbeing and their social determinants
- Primary and secondary research on social, economic and environmental determinants of health and wellbeing
- Evidence reviews of population health research and policy options
- Development and testing of population-level complex interventions to improve population health and to reduce health inequalities
- Mixed method evaluation research
- Policy development and analysis
- Knowledge translation and exchange
The McCaughey Centre was established in 2006 with the support of the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) and the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne. It is named in honour of two outstanding Victorians, Davis and Jean McCaughey. Their commitment to ‘knowledge for common good’ is at the heart of all of the work of the McCaughey Centre. Jean McCaughey is the Centre’s Patron.