Aboriginal Health Practitioners and fluoride varnish: self-determination driven regulation amendment for integrated oral health care for Aboriginal children.

Self-determination informed policies are key to improved outcomes for Aboriginal health. Aboriginal leadership must be reflected throughout any public health reform process that affects Aboriginal communities. This paper presents a body of oral health policy work, undertaken under Loddon Mallee Aboriginal Reference Group's (LMARG's) leadership, as an exemplar of a self-determination informed change, that led to an amendment of an Australian state (Victoria) regulation - The Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Amendment (Registered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioners [AHPs]) Regulations 2022.

Centralized Intake Models and Recommendations for Their Use in Non-Acute Mental Health Services: A Scoping Review.

Centralized intake [CI] or single-entry models are utilized in health systems to facilitate service access by reducing waiting times. This scoping review aims to consolidate the Literature on CI service models to identify their characteristics and rationales for their use, as well as contexts in which they are used and challenges and benefits in implementing them. The review also aims to offer some lessons learned from the Literature and to make recommendations for its implementation in non-acute mental health services.

The victims, villains and heroes of 'panic buying': News media attribution of responsibility for COVID-19 stockpiling.

Societies often respond to a crisis by attributing blame to some groups while constructing others as victims and heroes. While it has received scant sociological attention, 'panic buying' is a critical indicator of such public sentiment at the onset of a crisis, and thus a crucial site for analysis. This article traces dynamics of blame in news media representations of an extreme period of panic buying during COVID-19 in Australia.

The Power in Rural Place Stigma.

The phenomenon and implications of stigma have been recognized across many contexts and in relation to many discrete issues or conditions. The notion of spatial stigma has been developed within stigma literature, although the importance and relevance of spatial stigma for rural places and rural people have been largely neglected. This is the case even within fields of inquiry like public and rural health, which are expansively tasked with addressing the socio-structural drivers of health inequalities.

Using Mobile Phone Apps to Deliver Rural General Practitioner Services: Critical Review Using the Walkthrough Method.

Background: The widespread use of mobile phones represents new frontiers for improving access to health care. This includes using mobile apps to deliver general practitioner (GP) services in rural areas. However, the wider adoption of apps for increasing access to rural GP services relies on understanding how they might intersect with the rural health system context.

Hype, evidence gaps and digital divides: Telehealth blind spots in rural Australia.

Despite high unmet demand for health services across rural Australia, uptake of telehealth has been slow, piecemeal and ad hoc. We argue that widespread failure to understand telehealth as a socio-technical practice is key to understanding this slow progress. To develop this argument, we explore how technocentric approaches to telehealth have contributed to critical blind spots.

The impact of telehealth on patient attendance and revenue within an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation during COVID-19.

Background And Objectives: Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) provide culturally appropriate medical services to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of telehealth on patient attendance and revenue within an ACCHO during COVID-19.

Method: This is a time-series study of general practitioner attendances at a regional Victorian ACCHO in two periods: March-June 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and March-June 2020 (during COVID-19).

How rural immersion training influences rural work orientation of medical students: Theory building through realist evaluation.

Aim: To develop theory about how contexts and mechanisms interact to contribute to openness to future rural practice by medical students undertaking immersive rural training.

Methods: A realist evaluation based on RAMESES II protocol. We interviewed 23 students exploring Contexts (C) which were external (place-based) and internal (the student's characteristics), Mechanisms (M) (that drive a response) and Outcomes (O) (openness to rural work).

'It's so rich, you know, what they could be experiencing': rural places for general practitioner learning.

Globally there is an urban/rural divide in relation to health and healthcare access. A key strategy for addressing general practitioner shortages in rural areas is GP vocational training in rural places, as this may aid in developing practitioners' scope, values and community orientation, and increase propensity for rural practice. This creates a need for deeper understanding of the nature and quality of this training.

Rural Pandemic Preparedness: The Risk, Resilience and Response Required of Primary Healthcare.

Pandemic situations present enormous risks to essential rural primary healthcare (PHC) teams and the communities they serve. Yet, the pandemic policy development for rural contexts remains poorly defined. This article draws on reflections of the rural PHC response during the COVID-19 pandemic around three elements: risk, resilience, and response.

Mobile Health Apps That Help With COVID-19 Management: Scoping Review.

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) apps have played an important role in mitigating the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response. However, there is no resource that provides a holistic picture of the available mHealth apps that have been developed to combat this pandemic.

Objective: Our aim is to scope the evidence base on apps that were developed in response to COVID-19.

An exploration of the experiences of GP registrar supervisors in small rural communities: a qualitative study.

Background: In Australia registrar training to become a general practitioner (GP) involves three to four years of supervised learning with at least 50% of GP registrars training wholly in rural areas. In particular rural over regional GP placements are important for developing future GPs with broader skills because the rural scope of practice is wider. Having enough GP supervisors in smaller rural communities is essential such training.

COVID-19-Extending Surveillance and the Panopticon.

Surveillance is a core function of all public health systems. Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have deployed traditional public health surveillance responses, such as contact tracing and quarantine, and extended these responses with the use of varied technologies, such as the use of smartphone location data, data networks, ankle bracelets, drones, and big data analysis. Applying Foucault's (1979) notion of the panopticon, with its twin focus on surveillance and self-regulation, as the preeminent form of social control in modern societies, we examine the increasing levels of surveillance enacted during this pandemic and how people have participated in, and extended, this surveillance, self-regulation, and social control through the use of digital media.

Factors related to rural general practitioners supervising general practice registrars in Australia: A national cross-sectional study.

Background And Objectives: General practice training in Australia is uniquely structured to allow half of all registrars to train in rural areas, in order to increase rural workforce development and access to rural primary care. There is, however, limited national-scale information about rural general practice supervisors who underpin the capacity for rural general practice training. The objective of this research was to explore the factors related to rural general practitioners (GPs) supervising general practice registrars.

Men's weight loss stories: How personal confession, responsibility and transformation work as social control.

Obesity is considered a public health concern. In Australia, there are a greater number of overweight or obese men compared with women. The media is an important source of information about body weight and weight management.

Obese people's perceptions of the thin ideal.

The media play a key role in promoting the thin ideal. A qualitative study, in which we used in depth interviews and thematic analysis, was undertaken to explore the attitudes of 142 obese individuals toward media portrayals of the thin ideal. Participants discussed the thin ideal as a social norm that is also supported through the exclusion of positive media portrayals of obese people.

"At 150 kg, you can't run" men's weight loss stories in a popular health magazine provide appropriate examples of good health practice.

We explore weight loss stories from 47 men collected from the Australian edition of magazine between January 2009 and December 2012. Our analysis uses a mixed methods approach that combines thematic analysis and descriptive statistics to examine weight loss strategies against clinical practice guidelines for the management of overweight and obesity. All the stories reported the use of physical activity for weight loss and most stories detailed dietary changes for weight loss.

Online dating and mating: the use of the internet to meet sexual partners.

Australia has experienced a large increase in Internet usage, and online dating is used for seeking romantic and sexual partners. Using a qualitative approach, 15 people who use online dating took part in in-depth, online chat interviews. Nearly all participants used multiple dating sites to seek partners and making use of email, chat and webcam to engage with, assess, validate and qualify their potential sexual partners.

Evaluating an internet weight loss program for diabetes prevention.

Being overweight or obese is a major risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes but weight loss through lifestyle interventions can markedly reduce its incidence. The Internet provides an opportunity for the development and implementation of lifestyle intervention programs that promote self-managed behavioural change. We developed an online weight loss program emphasizing physical activity and dietary modifications and conducted a short-term qualitative evaluation of it, examining participant recruitment from the general public, website usage and satisfaction and use of self-reported health risk appraisal records.