Professor Manfred Lenzen

School of Physics, Faculty of Science

Professor John Crawford

Charles Perkins Centre

The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is a concept in which organisations such as companies and government agencies can measure their impact and performance in terms of the 'three pillars of sustainability'. These three pillars are the economy, the society and the environment.

Recently, TBL reporting for organisations has been advanced by applying quantitative methods. While economic and environmental indicators are readily available, only few social issues/indicators have been quantitatively conceptualised.

In this program, we aim to add a range of quantitative social indicators to the existing TBL indicator suite. See the list of indicators [PDF, 1.1MB] available in the ISA framework.

This will be done in the context of calculating full social and economic return on investment in public health and social enterprise ventures. In particular, the study considers three groups, one a low-socio economic cohort in Sydney, an Aboriginal community in north-west New South Wales and the other an Aboriginal community in southern New South Wales.

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We are interested in exploring the effects of social networks on coordination of individual care pathways. We are working on number of projects which deals with modelling dynamic coordination through social networks.

Traditionally, within studies of multi organisational coordination, there has been a discounting or neglect of social networks as a source of exploring the inherent relationships among actors, their activities, shared goals and interdependencies.

Coordinating operations requiring more collaborative problem solving involving officials and local communities are underscored in recent studies.

Our aim is to develop social network-based theoretical perspectives for the study of coordination structures in public health care systems. We apply theories and methods from network centrality to model the dynamic coordination structure and process.

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We will use input output analysis to map and quantify the extent of trade in food commodities implicated in the global obesity epidemic, e.g. sugar.

Analysis of the underlying patterns will be used to develop advice for policy relating to the use of market mechanisms to regulate the trade of goods that have a negative effect on health.

These discussions are already underway in the context of a global carbon market but have not been explored in the context of preventative health.

The project will also consider the implications of market mechanisms for local economies and how impacts may be ameliorated.

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We propose to study the problem of coordinating healthcare to optimise the control and treatment of diet-related disease. A study of social networks and its analysis can help in understanding the frequency, strength of ties, density of the individuals, teams and community members.

Of particular interest to us are the social networks that emerge in an ad hoc fashion in response to fluctuating demands on the system. These networks typically consist of representatives from different federal, state, and local government  and NGO agencies.

Our study will contribute to an understanding of how such extended networks operate in a coordinated manner in the context of mitigation and management of chronic disease, and to inform the creative use of information technology tools to facilitate communication and coordination of preparation and implementation through such social networks.

The main questions we address in this proposal are:

1. What role and implications do these ad-hoc networks have in sharing local knowledge so that intervention coordination can be effective?

2. How can we capitalise on the existing ad-hoc response networks for building a sustainable healthcare coordination program?

3. How can we develop a better understanding of the state of inter agency communication for management of chronic disease?

4. How do we support, equip, and enable ad-hoc networks to function more?

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