A forum led by the UNSW team developed recommendations that will help shape the hospital’s new Green Park Urban Health Hub.
An Innovation Forum designed and delivered by the UNSW Innovation Hub is helping St Vincent’s Hospital reimagine how mental health care is delivered in the community.
The forum for the hospital’s Green Park Urban Health Hub project brought together interdisciplinary experts and those with lived experience to design innovative ways of creating equitable access to essential health services.
The Urban Health Hub project is an evolution in how St Vincent’s responds to growing community mental health needs. It will deliver a sustainable, integrated model of care that will provide immediate crisis care and peer-led engagement.
St Vincent’s Hospital approached UNSW to help facilitate the co-design of the service because of the Innovation Hub’s recognised strength in bringing together diverse and inclusive teams to solve problems and create societal impact.
“It is an enormous privilege to be working with St Vincent’s on such an important initiative as our first external partnership as the UNSW Innovation Hub,” said Innovation Hub Director Dr Carly Vickers.
Innovating to change lives
Innovation Hub design strategists guided forum participants through three interactive sessions to develop the new approach to community mental health. The first session unpacked key service and experience design considerations for the inaugural Urban Health Hub, which will launch at the historic Green Park Hotel site in Darlinghurst.
This was followed by a mapping exercise to identify potential project partners and areas for ongoing research, followed by an impact activity focused on scaling and wide implementation of this new model of care beyond Sydney.
Each session was designed to spark innovative thinking and bold ideas and was synthesised into a set of recommendations for consideration by the St Vincent’s project team.
At the start of the forum, St Vincent’s Hospital Network CEO Anna McFadgen highlighted the importance of the project and the key role played by the UNSW Innovation Hub. She said that when done right, this work has the power to profoundly change lives.
Speakers for the event included urbanist and philanthropist Lucy Turnbull AO, Inner City Health Stream Manager and Director of the Urban Health Hub project Sean Evans, St Vincent's Curran Foundation CEO Shanthini Naidoo and Green Park Project Coordinator Carrie Deane.
Ms Deane played a pivotal role in shaping the collaboration with UNSW.
“The UNSW Innovation Hub designed and delivered a powerful platform for our diverse expert stakeholders to come together and truly explore a future-focused design framework for the St Vincent’s Urban Health Hub,” she said.
The partnership with St Vincent’s showcased UNSW Innovation Hub’s commitment to creating societal impact with partners at scale and at pace by driving innovation through creative collaborative processes.
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Main image: Dr Carly Vickers (centre), Director of the UNSW Innovation Hub with forum participants.
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