Dr Brittany Johnson, Senior Research Fellow at Flinders University and EPOCH-Translate Stream 1 Leader, reflects on her experience attending the Preventive Health Conference 2026.

In May 2026, I had the privilege of attending the Public Health Association of Australia’s Preventive Health Conference in the beautiful Nipaluna/Hobart, as well as the pre-conference event, the National School Food Summit.

It was wonderful to connect with colleagues old and new, and to share findings from my discrete choice experiment that assessed caregivers of 0-5-year olds’ preferences for initiative elements from those coded within the TOPCHILD Collaboration. While this was a rapid presentation, it was a great opportunity to promote new research from the TOPCHILD Collaboration evidence base. This research on caregiver preferences can be used to tailor and embed these initiative elements into routine practice.

While at the conference, informal networking provided opportunities to connect with government and non-government organisations, including Fiona Nave from Health and Wellbeing Queensland (a TOPCHILD-Policy partner). The conversation sparked ideas about incorporating practice evidence into the Child Health Evidence Hub. Following post-conference discussions, this will lead to Health and Wellbeing Queensland initiatives, such as Before the Baby Bump, being summarised within the Child Health Evidence Hub.

Several presentations reflected common methods and projects in EPOCH-Translate, such as the value of consistent outcome measures (i.e. the need for the EPOCH Core Outcome Measurement Set) and the evaluation of co-design in technology development (TOPCHILD-Policy).

The conference included a powerful Welcome to Country by Mr Dewayne Everettsmith and a keynote from Professor Ray Lovett, which urged the Public Health Association of Australia to release a statement declaring racism as a national public health emergency. The importance of working with priority populations was echoed in the workshop I participated in about the importance of listening and working alongside (not for) new migrants and other cultural groups.

The preconference National School Food Summit was an excellent opportunity to connect with others from schools, non-government organisations and universities, who are all interested in food in schools. While not directly within the focus of EPOCH-Translate, it was another capacity-building opportunity to raise my profile in an emerging research area that I hope to pursue in school and early care and education settings in the future.

Thank you to EPOCH-Translate for the travel support.