Consumer centres

Funding is provided to the Health Issues Centre to provide advice to the Department, and to hospitals on consumer and community participation in health care decision making, support for consumer representatives, consumer protection, consumer information and privacy and access to medical records.

Funding is provided to the Centre for Health Communication and Participation, which includes the work of the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group. The review group's role is to assess the effects of interventions aimed at improving communication between consumers and health care professionals. The group is the only Cochrane review group in Victoria and plays a lead role in supporting and linking Victorian clinicians, health consumers and policy makers to international developments and resources for improving the quality of decision making by basing it on high quality evidence.

For more information on the Cochrane Collaboration please visit the Cochrane website.