‘We know that the perinatal period is a high-risk time for women as it’s a stage of significant change and adjustment. It can trigger old wounds or open new ones.

‘This is all the more important when there’s a baby in the mix, because we want mothers to have the capacity to meet their baby’s practical and emotional needs, so be sure to ask for support if you need it.’

According to perinatal anxiety and depression not-for-profit organisation PANDA, up to one in five expecting mums will experience anxiety and depression during pregnancy and the first year of their baby’s life.

About Women’s Health Week

Women's Health Week was launched in 2013 by Jean Hailes for Women's Health, a national not-for-profit organisation dedicated to improving women’s health. Hailes established Australia’s first women's health clinic in 1971 – one of the inaugural menopause clinics in the world – dedicated to midlife and menopause.

Now in its 10th year, Women’s Health Week is a celebration of women from all walks of life and is recognised as the biggest week for women’s health and wellbeing in Australia.

For more information and resources, visit the Women’s Health Week website.

Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital

The $200 million Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital, on the Sunshine Hospital site, opened in May 2019 to meet the demand for world-class maternity and paediatric services in Melbourne’s west.

Learn more about the Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital via our dedicated project page.

Come along to our community pop-up in the Target Centre to learn more about the $384.2 million Warrnambool Base Hospital redevelopment.

We want to hear from you about what’s important to you and your family to help us shape key family and outdoor spaces in the redeveloped hospital.

Team members from the Victorian Health Building Authority and South West Healthcare will be available to answer your questions about the redevelopment and to support you to complete our community survey.

There will also be colouring in sheets on hand for the kids!

The Victorian Government is investing $384.2 million to deliver the Warrnambool Base Hospital redevelopment.

A new multi-storey hospital tower will deliver a bigger emergency department, more operating theatres, an extra 22 inpatient beds and dedicated areas for pathology services and dialysis.

With more families choosing to make Warrnambool home, a dedicated paediatric unit will provide specialised care to children and young people.

A new offsite Regional Logistics Distribution Centre (RLDC) will also provide goods, equipment and linen services to the hospital as well as other public health services in the region.

The redevelopment will transform services at the hospital, giving Victoria's south west community access to world-class healthcare facilities close to home.

Learn more about the Warrnambool Base Hospital redevelopment via our dedicated project page.

The Victorian Health Building Authority (VHBA) is responsible for the planning and delivery of the Victorian Government’s multi-billion-dollar health infrastructure program. What are we doing to ensure what we are building now will be sustainable and climate resilient?

‘Hospitals are energy intensive due to the nature of services they provide, and the amount of floor space that is heated and cooled to tightly controlled temperatures. In 2021-22 we used some 5.6 petajoules of energy, with a rough 50-50 split for electricity and gas. On average 1.4 gigajoules of energy per square metre, or about 220 kilograms of carbon per square metre.

Due to the age of many public hospitals in Victoria, there are significant energy efficiency opportunities. In the past five to six years we have invested some $30 million in energy efficiency and solar, and there is plenty more investment to come.

Some of the things we are doing in the capital works space include:

• specification of what we expect to see as business as usual on all projects
• allocation of 2.5 per cent of the total construction cost to invest in sustainability initiatives above standard practice
• setting design targets of at least five-stars under Victoria’s National Australian Built Environment Rating Scheme (NABERS) for all new public hospitals and major expansions
• requiring air tightness testing on our buildings
• increased focus on electrification
• employing sustainability consultants on all our projects.

An example is the $7 million energy performance contract at Peninsula Health where we installed over 4,500 LED lights, replaced ageing steam infrastructure, installed efficient plant, and upgraded building controls. This reduced carbon by over 20 per cent and paid for itself in five years.'

Electrification

‘Electrification is a big focus for us and a major way we are designing and building sustainable facilities with NABERS design targets being a real game changer. Building a hospital to five-star all-electric would use around 10 gigawatt hours of electricity a year. If it was built to three-star, the average performance of electricity use would double to over 21 gigawatt hours.

In addition, we already require all our health facilities below 10,000 square meters to be all-electric and are doing this for ambulance stations, early parenting centres and other community health facilities.

We are also beginning to see all-electric options as part of the plans for our new major hospitals. The $900 million new Melton Hospital will be Victoria’s first all-electric hospital. This project was, I like to think, the catalyst for the new policy in Victoria’s gas substitution roadmap for government business cases for new public infrastructure required to include an all-electric option!

This really supports the Victorian Government’s commitment for all electricity used by publicly funded operations, including public hospitals, to be from 100 per cent renewable sources from 2025.

And there’s also solar, which is a real opportunity in our new and existing buildings. We now have 149 arrays installed with a capacity of 12 megawatt-peak, and a further 44 arrays with a capacity of nearly 4 megawatt-peak funded and being installed. This means that more of our hospitals are generating some of their own electricity, rather than sourcing it from the grid.'

Data

Having good environmental data must be key to managing the performance of assets. Can you tell us about what data you collect and how you use it to drive environmental performance?

‘Good data is essential – it’s a cliché but it’s true – you can’t manage what you don’t measure. The availability of data has increased significantly over the last 10 years. I remember asking suppliers for electronic data when I first started and being emailed a PDF copy of the bill!

Now the issue is having too much data and being able to manage it - we collect data from 1,500  electricity meters, 700 gas meters, 1,400 water meters and generation data from over 150 solar arrays. And while this is all valuable, data is only as good as how you use it.

We use data for:

• building the business case for investment 
• completing annual energy and water NABERS ratings for our 140 hospitals
• informing benchmarks for our capital works program
• reporting internally on key metrics such as energy intensity, carbon emissions and cost
• reporting publicly on our performance through our annual report.

If you’re collecting and using data, here are a few of my data rules:

• if you ask someone to give you data, offer insights from that data in return
• see data for the value it provides, not for the cost of collecting it
• collect the level of data you need – too much data can be overwhelming if you don’t have the resources or systems to manage it
• source electronic data direct from your suppliers – reduce manual entry effort and errors as much as you can
• manage data throughout the year, not the week before you need to do your reporting.’

Learn more about our guidelines for sustainability in capital works, all-electric new Melton Hospital, Peninsula Health energy performance contract and regional health solar program.