A great advancement in health is that it has become more mainstream for patients, their families, and communities to be included in decisions about their health.
Yet across the sector, we have not always ensured that engagement is meaningful, sustainable, and respectful of the time and energy people contribute.
From a nurse-led perspective, grounded in close relationships with patients and communities, it is important to reflect on why community engagement matters and to be clear about its purpose.
At CCDR, there are three reasons that guide why we do this work.
When we talk about infrastructure, we often think of the physical structures and systems needed to deliver health services, support basic research, and run clinical trials. What we talk about less often is the infrastructure needed to create environments where community-based organisations can systematically collect patient experience data and implement services that respond to real community needs.
This reflects a nurse-led approach, one that values proximity to patients, holistic understanding of people’s lives, and the importance of continuous engagement across care settings.
By prioritising relationships, lived experience, and practical implementation, CCDR helps build the kind of enabling infrastructure that allows community-informed health services to take shape.
This is how we do it
Personal Experience, Expectations and Knowledge (PEEK) studies use a single, standardised protocol and a mixed-methods design that includes an online questionnaire and a structured interview. This approach enables the routine and proactive collection of patient experience and expectation data by an independent agency, while allowing people to participate directly without requiring clinical referral. All reports are publicly available, creating a transparent and systematic repository of patient experience data. Developed through two years of protocol development and feasibility testing, the program reflects a nurse-led approach that combines methodological rigour with practical, patient-centred implementation.
The PEEK protocol is multi-dimensional and cross-validated, capturing a broad and holistic range of domains. Participants are invited to reflect on their experiences and, recognising them as experts in their own lives, to share their expectations and recommendations for the future. This reflects the nursing vantage point across disciplines and care settings – attending not only to clinical experiences but also to the physical, emotional, and social realities that shape people’s health. By prioritising meaningful interaction and patient advocacy, the program ensures that people’s insights directly inform decisions about treatment, care, information, and communication. CCDR also has the capacity to conduct interviews in multiple languages and contexts, supporting inclusive engagement with diverse communities and enabling respectful collaboration across health and community sectors.
The Pathways virtual clinic service helps patients make the most of existing services within the health system.
Following an access model of care, Pathways is a community-based triage service that is being developing for more applications in in disaster and conflict settings. The care model remains nurse-led and covers out-of-hospital care. As an example, during the height of COVID when patients with chronic conditions weren’t able to access hospital care, nurses managed their care locally. As nurses ‘sit’ within community based organisations, they are well placed to pick up their care following discharge to ensure discharge plans are following with continuity of care and rehabilitation.
Our service is fully virtual and to protect patient privacy, we do not record any calls or sessions. Pathways supports patients with reliable health information and our service is designed to complement -not replace – care from treating clinicians.
What we do offer is clear, supportive guidance to help you better understand your health concerns. We provide health education, structured symptom guidance based on predefined protocols, and help identify potential warning signs that may require attention. When appropriate, we can recommend next steps – such as seeking care, contacting your primary care provider, or seeing a specialist – and assist you in understanding how to access the healthcare system to get the right care at the right time.
Personal The Public Health Network Development & Implementation Program aligns with nurse-led principles that prioritise meaningful engagement and patient and community advocacy, the program emphasises practical application, ensuring that insights generated through networks translate into improvements in public health practice. Our two core networks are the Global Federation for Primary & Community Nursing and the Global Federation of Patient Organisations.
The program brings together professionals working across public health and health systems to support collaboration, shared learning, and the exchange of knowledge. Grounded in a nurse-led approach, the program reflects nursing’s long-standing role in connecting people, services, and communities across care settings. It draws on the nursing vantage point across disciplines and sectors to support practical collaboration that strengthens public health practice and advances evidence-informed approaches.
Through these networks, the program facilitates connections among practitioners, researchers, and policy stakeholders, organizing meetings, workshops, and collaborative activities that encourage open dialogue on emerging public health challenges and solutions. This reflects a commitment to collegial generosity and respectful collaboration across professions, while creating space for ongoing ethical reflection and shared learning. The program also conducts desk research and evidence reviews to inform discussions and develops guidance materials and best-practice summaries that support implementation across diverse health and community settings.
Awards and recognition
2025: Top ten Aster Guardians Global Nursing prize out of 100,000+ candidates
2024: Australia Primary Health Care Nurses Association, President’s Award for a legacy contribution to primary care
