Evaluation of Victoria Police SOCIT-MDC reforms for sexual assault investigation

 This thesis evaluated the impact of sexual offence reforms implemented by Victoria Police. The findings of this thesis demonstrated that the reforms reduced victim-blaming attitudes of police, improved investigators’ understanding of sexual offending, increased perceptions of case authorisation, and demonstrated faster police investigation times after the reform.

Self-care perspectives of Chinese immigrants with type 2 diabetes living in Victoria, Australia

 The main finding of the qualitative study is cultural beliefs significantly influenced diabetes self-care. The findings described how Chinese immigrants with diabetes living in Victoria managed diabetes self-care by rebuilding own liveable balance through implementation of several culture-related beliefs, attitudes and strategies to maintain their life balance after they were diagnosed with diabetes.

Comparing subjective well-being and health-related quality of life of Australian drug users in treatment in regional and rural Victoria

The aim of this study is to examine the self-reported subjective well-being and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of alcohol and other drug users and to examine whether subjective well-being in this sample would be predicted by either HRQOL and/or severity of dependence.

A population-based observational study of diabetes during pregnancy in Victoria, Australia, 1999-2008

Objectives: This paper reports secular trends in diabetes in pregnancy in Victoria, Australia and examines the effect of including or excluding women with pre-existing diabetes on gestational diabetes (GDM) prevalence estimates.

Characteristics of cancer diagnoses and staging in South Western Victoria: a rural perspective

Australian states and territories have legislation mandating reporting of cancer diagnoses; however, tumour stage at diagnosis, treatment plan and associated outcomes are not routinely recorded in cancer registries for all tumour types. This study describes the Evaluation of Cancer Outcomes study that collects detailed information for patients diagnosed with cancer in south-western Victoria.

Coronary heart disease risk in volunteer firefighters in Victoria, Australia

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a major problem for firefighters, even when considering the healthy worker effect (HWE). Although volunteer firefighters outnumber paid personnel, previous research has focused on paid US firefighters. By contrast, no CHD data for Australian firefighters exist. Risk factor data were collected from 2,943 Australian volunteer firefighters and CHD risk was compared with reference "low-risk" and Australian population data. Predicted CHD risk for male and female firefighter was 19.2% and 5.1%, respectively. Female firefighters high blood pressure and fasting glucose was significantly lower than the general population, whereas all other risk factors was similar to the general population. Firefighters' CHD risk was greater than other volunteer and paid emergency services, but the prevalence for most risk factors was similar to the general population. Therefore, Australian volunteer firefighters may not benefit from the HWE.