RESOURCE: UPK Report and AP Design Guide

Recently uploaded to the HH resources are two foundational documents, the UPK Report and the AP Design Guide.

All of Healthabitats work is founded on principles in the “Uwankara Palyanku Kanyintjaku,” or UPK (a plan to stop people getting sick) report published in 1987. This evolved into the HfH survey, which is a survey and fix process initially tested on houses in a community in the APY Lands of Central Australia. This method puts at the centre the person and their health, then connects them to the parts of their living environment needed to stay healthy.

UPK is now used nationally and internationally as a model for improving environmental health in developing communities. It provides a framework for developments on the APY Lands. The guiding principles for program design include providing a safe physical environment, promoting access to functioning health hardware, and increasing peoples capacity to access health hardware on an affordable ongoing basis. A significant role is working closely with communities to assist them in using their resources for improving the health status of Anangu through environmental health programs..

The AP Design Guide has a series of recommendations for design and building of suitable shelters and housing to provide optimum levels of health and safety, it is supplementary to the UPK report. The guide is an attempt by A.P. to give communities information about building which will lead to “buildings for well being” rather than repeat the building mistakes and associated poor health recorded by the U.P.K. review.

The principles in these documents still apply today.