Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health

Lived Experience Engagement

Lived experience voices help us co-design services to improve the health experiences and outcomes of South Australians.

The voic­es of peo­ple with lived expe­ri­ence are impor­tant to us. We are com­mit­ted to work­ing with lived expe­ri­ence part­ners, for­mer­ly known as con­sumers, to ensure their expe­ri­ences help inform the work we do and improve health expe­ri­ences and out­comes in South Australia.

Our Con­sumer Engage­ment Frame­work (PDF 1MB) out­lines how we work with lived expe­ri­ence part­ners and includes prac­ti­cal exam­ples from across the CEIH.

We also work close­ly with oth­er organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing Health Trans­la­tion South Aus­tralia and Local Health Net­works to sup­port lived expe­ri­ence engage­ment across the health sys­tem, and we strive to con­tin­u­al­ly improve how we sup­port lived expe­ri­ence voic­es in health.

Our Lived Experience Groups

Multicultural businesspeople working in an office lobby. Group of happy businesspeople smiling while sitting together in a co-working space. Young entrepreneurs collaborating on a new project.

Lived Experience Leadership Group

Our Lived Expe­ri­ence Lead­er­ship Group brings togeth­er the CEIH’s lived expe­ri­ence part­ners to pro­vide a stronger, col­lec­tive lived expe­ri­ence voice and ensure our engage­ment is mean­ing­ful, effec­tive and informed by lived experience.

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Happy teenage girl laughing while using cell phone and communicating with her friends in hallway at high school.

Youth Advisory Group (YAG)

Our Youth Advi­so­ry Group helps us under­stand young peo­ples’ voic­es and health­care expe­ri­ences to dri­ve change and improve health­care out­comes for young South Australians.

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Consumer and Community Engagement Professionals Community of Practice

The Con­sumer and Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Pro­fes­sion­als Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice is a group of pro­fes­sion­als work­ing across health organ­i­sa­tions to strength­en con­sumer and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment across the South Aus­tralian health system.

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Exam­ples of lived expe­ri­ence engagement

Lived expe­ri­ence engage­ment is embed­ded across our work, includ­ing projects, forums and workshops.

We work across a spec­trum of engage­ment, from inform­ing and con­sult­ing through to part­ner­ing and lived expe­ri­ence-led approach­es. This is tai­lored depend­ing on the pur­pose of the work, the con­text and the lev­el of influ­ence lived expe­ri­ence part­ners can have.

Our work is ground­ed in prin­ci­ples of part­ner­ship, par­tic­i­pa­tion, respect, acces­si­bil­i­ty and diver­si­ty. These prin­ci­ples sup­port shared deci­sion-mak­ing and co-design wher­ev­er possible.

Exam­ples of this in prac­tice include:

Past engagement highlights
  • Build­ing capa­bil­i­ty among The CEIH staff and Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work Leads, Clin­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice Chairs and The CEIH Com­mu­ni­ty of Con­sumers by deliv­er­ing tai­lored stake­hold­er and con­sumer engage­ment train­ing. Read more here.
  • Lived expe­ri­ence rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the work­ing group for the Germline Genet­ic Test­ing for Treat­ment project. Read more here.

Have a question?

Or want to get involved? Email us at CEIH@​sa.​gov.​au.