Workshops

Companion animals are an important part of many remote communities in Northern Australia and play an important role in the health of people, other animals and their shared environments. However, preparedness for companion-animal zoonoses, which are diseases that can spread between companion animals and people, is not always well integrated into Australia’s formal biosecurity and disease management systems.

This is particularly important for remote communities, where early recognition of unusual disease events, access to veterinary services and laboratory testing, communication, and activation of biosecurity pathways may depend on a small number of community-based stakeholders working across different areas and sectors.

The workshop will use hypothetical zoonotic disease scenarios to explore what happens from the moment an unusual disease event is detected through to the measures taken to reduce the risks of the disease to people, other animals and the environment.

The workshop will explore how existing disease management systems operate in real life, including whether formal systems are understood, accessible and achievable in remote settings, and where barriers or gaps may exist between community, veterinary, public health, environmental health and government systems.

Bringing together One Health stakeholders provides an opportunity to examine these challenges from the viewpoint of those closest to the communities and environments where these disease events may occur.

The workshop will help develop practical insights into roles and responsibilities, communication and response pathways, access to services, coordination between health sectors, and response measures that are achievable in remote settings. Importantly, it will provide a forum for local stakeholders to identify where existing systems work well, where assumptions about these systems differ between health sectors, and what could strengthen preparedness for future disease events.

This workshop forms part of a larger assessment of stakeholder perspectives on companion-animal zoonotic disease preparedness in remote Northern Australia and may help identify priorities for future exercises, capability building, and more connected One Health responses.

Workshop discussions may also inform the co-development of a proposed field-based full-scale simulation exercise focused on strengthening One Health preparedness in remote Northern Australia.

The Western Australia Aboriginal Environmental Health (WAAEH) Program uses the SafetyCulture platform to support Aboriginal Environmental Health Practitioners (AEHPs) in collecting and managing field-based environmental health data across Aboriginal communities.

AEHPs undertake a broad range of environmental health activities, including Healthy Home Assessments, clinically driven referrals, pest and animal management initiatives, and community partnership and advocacy projects.

Data are collected in real time using mobile devices, creating a valuable dataset that supports program monitoring, evaluation, and assessment of progress towards reducing environmental health-related disease.

A key function of the program is documenting housing issues associated with critical healthy hardware infrastructure. Although SafetyCulture provides basic reporting functionality, it can be challenging to generate meaningful insights from large and complex datasets.

To address this challenge, the WAAEH Program adopted Microsoft Power BI as a complementary analytics and visualisation platform.

Power BI converts routinely collected operational information into dynamic dashboards that provide real-time insights into program performance and environmental health outcomes.

Examples include monitoring housing repair timeliness, tracking environmental health issues identified in communities, and reporting animal health management activities such as tick treatment and desexing programs across regions.

These visualisations support evidence-based decision making, identify program trends, and enable more targeted interventions.

Integrating Power BI with SafetyCulture demonstrates how enhanced analytics can strengthen environmental health service delivery, improve resource allocation, and support better outcomes for Aboriginal communities throughout Western Australia.

✓ Using SafetyCulture for environmental health data collection

✓ Building actionable Power BI dashboards

✓ Visualising housing and healthy hardware issues

✓ Tracking environmental health performance indicators

✓ Monitoring animal health management activities

✓ Supporting evidence-based decision making

✓ Improving environmental health service delivery in Aboriginal communities