LiveLighter® is a comprehensive healthy lifestyle promotion and education program, funded by the Western Australian (WA) Department of Health since 2012, and delivered by Cancer Council WA. To strengthen the program’s stakeholder engagement activities, a new systems-level initiative was developed and piloted in 2024. This new initiative offered funding to local government agencies (LGAs) for promoting healthy eating and/or movement activities consistent with the needs of their community. This paper describes the initiative’s implementation and process outcomes, and critically reflects on how components impacted its success.
LGAs with existing working relationships with Cancer Council WA were offered up to $5000 to support community activities enabling their residents to make small lifestyle changes for health. At conclusion, Cancer Council WA staff were interviewed on the initiative’s coordination and the responses thematically analysed to identify facilitators and barriers to its delivery.
Seven LGAs and one community organisation received funding (n=8), with each funding different activities depending on their understanding of what would be most useful in their communities. Funded activities covered healthy eating (n=3), physical activity (n=2) or both (n=3); and new (n=3), extended (n=2) or both new and extended (n=3) activities. Three organisations required greater program staff time to identify how funds could be used for health promotion activities. Two organisations committed to longer-term partnerships after the funding period.
The health promotion experience of Cancer Council WA staff and the flexibility for LGAs to identify health promotion activities that met the unique needs in their area facilitated success of this pilot systems-level initiative. Sharing success stories has added credibility and highlighted the adaptability of the LiveLighter® program to be applied at the grassroots level. This will be important for partnering with local agencies responsible for developing mandated public health plans and creating environments conducive to healthier lifestyles.