Leadership and commitment to skin cancer prevention from Local Governments can influence shade creation, sun safety for outdoor workers and local awareness. Queensland has 77 local governments of vastly different sizes however all have opportunities to lead sun safety in their local community.
As part of the broader Skin Cancer Prevention and Early Intervention Project 2022-2026, Queensland Health in partnership with Cancer Council Queensland, offered $5,000 grants to 29, regional, rural, and remote local governments in early 2024. Twelve local governments submitted successful bids which included completing a sun safety checklist and identifying 2 or 3 ways they could commit to improving sun safety over 2 years.
The sun safety checklist had four areas of investigation: Communication about sun safety with the public; Shade planning and creation; Outdoor worker sun safety; and Leadership for sun safety. The checklist made local government leadership for sun safety more concrete and will contribute to monitoring change.
Local governments serving smaller populations were more likely to apply for the grant. The contact person from the council was most frequently someone from workplace health and safety (n=5) however there were also people from tourism and economic development (n=2), community services (n=2), grants officers (n=2), and one CEO.
This presentation will include a discussion of the local government sun safety checklist and results, the profile of local government grant recipients, and priority actions. It will also reflect on targeted opportunities to support and boost local leadership for sun safety.