Graceville is not only one of Brisbane’s healthiest suburbs, but it’s also one of the most generous, according to the Domain Healthy Suburbs study.
The first ever Domain Healthy Suburbs is a project of Domain, in partnership with Deloitte Access Economics and Tract Consultants. The study aimed to look into how suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane provide health opportunities to its residents. To determine how healthy a suburb is, a total of 10 indicators that either help or hinder health were used.
These indicators are further categorised under:
- Recovery – helps in recovery from illness or injury
- Hindrance – elements that hinder an individual’s ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle
- Promotion – helps promote and encourage healthy lifestyle
The healthy suburb indicators:
- Walkability
- Active transport to work
- Open space
- Tree cover
- Access to fresh food/supermarkets
- Volunteering
- Fast food stores
- Liquor stores
- Hospitals
- Allied/Community health
Whilst volunteering may not be a full representation of social connectivity and community interaction, the data may be useful in providing insight into the level of connectivity of the community in the suburb. The volunteering indicator measured the proportion of population of volunteers in the suburb.
Graceville, as the study showed, is among Brisbane suburbs with the most number of civic-minded individuals. John Fitzwalter of Graceville Community Gardens, attests to how volunteer work help him develop a bond with the people in his community. As chairperson of the garden since 2015, he has been balancing his volunteering-work life keeping plants healthy and green and helping the community.
Authors of the study also underscored the difficulty of measuring social indicators such as feelings of community and belonging, yet they are important and can influence the mental health outcomes.
For this study, the use of volunteering as an indicator is based on the assumption that the level of volunteerism in a community affects the level of social connection amongst its residents.
The top ten suburbs teeming with kind-hearted individuals are Chelmer, St Lucia, Ashgrove, Kenmore, Bardon, Fig Tree Pocket, Corinda, Chapel Hill, Grange, and Graceville.