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Public health
Original research
Outcomes from the Victorian Healthy Homes Program: a randomised control trial of home energy upgrades
  1. Katie Page1,
  2. Lutfun Hossain1,
  3. Dan Liu1,
  4. Yo Han Kim1,
  5. Kerryn Wilmot1,
  6. Patricia Kenny1,
  7. Margaret Campbell1,
  8. Toby Cumming2,
  9. Scott Kelly1,
  10. Thomas Longden3,
  11. Kees van Gool4,
  12. Rosalie Viney1
  13. Victorian Healthy Homes Program (VHHP) Team
    1. 1University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
    2. 2Sustainability Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
    3. 3Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia
    4. 4The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
    1. Correspondence to Dr Katie Page; katie.page@uts.edu.au

    Abstract

    Objectives The Victorian Healthy Homes Program investigated the impact of thermal home upgrades on energy and health outcomes in vulnerable, older individuals over winter in Victoria, Australia.

    Design A staggered parallel-group randomised control trial design of 984 (764 per protocol (PP)) vulnerable households and 1313 (1015 PP) individuals. The intervention group received their upgrade prior to their winter of recruitment, and the control group received their upgrade after the winter of their recruitment.

    Setting Western Melbourne (metropolitan) and the Goulburn Valley (regional) in Victoria, Australia.

    Participants 1000 households were recruited: 800 from western Melbourne (metropolitan) and 200 from the Goulburn Valley (regional).

    Intervention A thermal comfort and home energy efficiency upgrade of up to $AUD3500 per household.

    Primary and secondary outcome measures The primary outcome was the change in indoor temperature over winter and the secondary outcomes were changes in quality of life, healthcare use and costs, self-reported health measures, energy use and costs and humidity.

    Results A relatively low-cost and simple home upgrade (average cost $A2809) resulted in reduced gas consumption (−25.5 MJ/day) and increased indoor winter temperatures (average daily increase of 0.33°C), and a reduction of exposure to cold conditions (<18°C) by an average of 0.71 hours (43 min) per day. The intervention group experienced improved mental health as measured by the short-form 36 mental component summary and social care related quality of life measured by the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit, less breathlessness and lower overall healthcare costs (an average of $A887 per person) over the winter period.

    Conclusions The home upgrades significantly increased average winter indoor temperature, improved mental health and social care-related quality of life and made householders more comfortable while yielding reductions in overall healthcare use and costs.

    Trial registration number Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12618000160235.

    • Health Services
    • Health Services for the Aged
    • Patient Reported Outcome Measures
    • PUBLIC HEALTH
    • Quality of Life
    • Randomised Controlled Trial

    Data availability statement

    No data are available. Health data are held in a secure research environment hosted by the Sax Institute and are archived. This was part of the consent conditions and data storage for the trial.

    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

    This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

    https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-082340

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      Data availability statement

      No data are available. Health data are held in a secure research environment hosted by the Sax Institute and are archived. This was part of the consent conditions and data storage for the trial.

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      Footnotes

      • Collaborators Victorian Healthy Homes Program (VHHP) team members: Stephen Goodall, Phil Haywood, Brendan Mulhern (Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation, University of Technology Sydney, Australia). Jay Falletta, Deepu Krishnan (Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Australia). Matthew Soeberg (Sustainability Victoria, Melbourne, Australia).

      • Contributors KP, LH, DL, KW, YHK were responsible for drafting and critically revising the manuscript. KvG, RV, TC and MC also critically revised the manuscript. Data extraction and quality assessment was performed by PK, KP, DL, LH, SK, KW, YHK. Authors KP, PK, DL, LH, SK, YHK, KW, KvG and RV are responsible for the data analysis. All authors contributed to the implementation of the study protocol. All authors have critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the final submission. RV is responsible for the overall content as guarantor.

      • Funding The Victorian Healthy Homes Program is funded by the Victorian State Government through the Sustainability Victoria Fund.

      • Competing interests None declared.

      • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

      • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

      • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.