Background: Commissioning for health services has been implemented as one approach to improve the quality and access to healthcare for First Nations, regional and remote populations. This review systematically scoped the literature for studies that described or evaluated the governance, funding, implementation and outcomes from health service commissioning targeting these groups in Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the United States (CANZUS nations).
Methods: Seventeen databases were searched for relevant peer reviewed and grey literature studies published in English from 2010 to 2023.
From 2018, the Schools Up North (SUN) programme worked with three remote Australian schools to enhance their capability and resilience to support the wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This paper explores the implementation of SUN during the first two years of COVID-19 (2020-2021). Using grounded theory methods, school staff, other service providers and SUN facilitators were interviewed, with transcripts and programme documents coded and interrelationships between codes identified.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Access to a coordinated range of strengths-based, culturally appropriate community-led primary mental health and Social and Emotional Wellbeing services is critical to the mental health and wellbeing of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and is a policy commitment of the Australian government. However, complex and fragmented service networks and a lack of standardised service data are barriers in identifying what services are available and what care they provide.
Method: A standardised service classification tool was used to assess the availability and characteristics of Social and Emotional Wellbeing services for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in two regions in Queensland, Australia.
Background: Primary healthcare services have principal responsibility for providing child and youth wellbeing and mental health services, but have lacked appropriate measurement instruments to assess the wellbeing of Indigenous children and youth or to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and services designed to meet their needs. This review assesses the availability and characteristics of measurement instruments that have been applied in primary healthcare services in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (CANZUS countries) to assess the wellbeing of Indigenous children and youth.
Methods: Fifteen databases and 12 websites were searched in December 2017 and again in October 2021.
Concerns about the complexity, fragmentation and inefficiency of Australia's current youth mental health service systems have led policy makers to seek improvements through a shift to community-based solutions. However, there is little evidence of how communities can make this shift. This paper examines the efforts of one Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter, respectfully, Indigenous) community-Yarrabah in north Queensland-to develop strategies for mental health and wellbeing service system improvements for school-aged youth (5-18 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Primary healthcare, particularly Indigenous-led services, are well placed to deliver services that reflect the needs of Indigenous children and their families. Important characteristics identified by families for primary health care include services that support families, accommodate sociocultural needs, recognise extended family child-rearing practices, and Indigenous ways of knowing and doing business. Indigenous family-centred care interventions have been developed and implemented within primary healthcare services to plan, implement, and support the care of children, immediate and extended family and the home environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: An Aboriginal-developed empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing program, known as Family Wellbeing (FWB), has been found to strengthen the protective factors that help Indigenous Australians to deal with the legacy of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. This article reviews the research that has accompanied the implementation of the program, over a 23 year period. The aim is to assess the long-term impact of FWB research and identify the key enablers of research impact and the limitations of the impact assessment exercise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConsistent with the aspirations of First Nations Australians for community control of healthcare services, 123/196 (63%) of Australia's First Nations-specific primary health care services are community-controlled. Yet despite policy commitment over 30 years, the transition of government-run First Nations' primary healthcare services to First Nations community control has been slow. This paper identifies the barriers and enablers to transitioning the delivery of primary healthcare services from Queensland Health to Gurriny Yealamucka community-controlled health service in Yarrabah.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pandemics such as COVID-19 are a serious public health risk for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, yet primary healthcare systems are not well resourced to respond to such urgent events. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a federal government advisory group recommended a rapid, tailored Indigenous response to prevent predicted high morbidity and mortality rates. This paper examines the efforts of one ACCHO, which in the absence of dedicated funding, pivoted its operations in response to COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Systems integration to promote the mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children works towards developing a spectrum of effective, community-based services and supports. These services and supports are organised into a coordinated network, build meaningful partnerships with families and address their cultural and linguistic needs, to help children to function better at home, in school, in the community, and throughout life. This study is conducted in partnership with primary healthcare (PHC) and other services in three diverse Indigenous Australian communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs) play a critical role in providing culturally appropriate, accessible primary healthcare (PHC) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. The success of many ACCHSs has led to increased policy support for their growth and development, including the transition of state government administered PHC services to Aboriginal community control in select communities. However, there is minimal published literature available which evaluates such transitions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIssue Addressed: Health promotion, the process of enabling people to increase control over their health, implies advocacy and empowerment on behalf of others. This does not account for the phenomena whereby Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have advocated to strengthen the determinants of their own and their communities' health. This paper provides a systematic scoping review of the published literature that documents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocacy to improve community empowerment during the time 1940-1970.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian adolescents from remote communities attend boarding schools, requiring integrated healthcare between home and schools. This study explored students' health status, healthcare service use and satisfaction.
Methodology: A two-phased mixed-methods explanatory design was implemented.
The concept of resilience offers a strengths-based framework for interventions to enhance Indigenous adolescent social and emotional well-being. Resilience interventions in or with schools encompass individual, social, and environmental factors that encourage health-promoting behaviors and assist adolescents in navigating toward resources that can sustain their health and well-being in times of adversity. This scoping review examined the literature on resilience-enhancing interventions for Indigenous adolescent students in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (CANZUS nations).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The capacity of the Indigenous primary healthcare (PHC) sector to continue playing a crucial role in meeting the health needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is in large part reliant on the skills, motivation and experience of its workforce. While exhibiting many workforce strengths, the sector faces significant challenges in building and maintaining a strong and stable workforce. Drawing on data from one Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service (ACCHS), this study reports what is working well and what could be improved to strengthen the Indigenous PHC sector workforce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To report the comparative rates, average length of stay and cost per episode of hospital management for self-harm in three age cohorts: 15-19 years, 20-24 years and 25-29 years; by sex and indigeneity.
Design, Setting, Participants: A secondary data analysis of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) dataset between 1st January 2014 and 31st December 2014 inclusive.
Main Outcome Measures: Cost per episode of hospitalised self-harm and rates by age group, sex and Indigenous status.
Background: Strong and effective workforce models are essential for improving comprehensive Indigenous primary healthcare service (PHC) provision to Indigenous peoples in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA (CANZUS nations). This review systematically scoped the literature for studies that described or evaluated models and systems that support the sustainability, capacity or growth of the Indigenous PHC workforce to provide effective PHC provision.
Methods: Eleven databases, 10 websites and clearinghouses, and the reference lists of 5 review articles were searched for relevant studies from CANZUS nations published in English from 2000 to 2017.
Resilience is enabled by internal, individual assets as well as the resources available in a person's environment to support healthy development. For Indigenous people, these resources and assets can include those which enhance cultural resilience. Measurement instruments which capture these core resilience constructs are needed, yet there is a lack of evidence about which instruments are most appropriate and valid for use with Indigenous adolescents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearchers worldwide are increasingly reporting the societal impact of their research as part of national research productivity assessments. However, the challenges they encounter in developing their impact case studies against specified government assessment criteria and how pitfalls can be mitigated are not reported. This paper examines the key steps taken to develop an Aboriginal Family Wellbeing (FWB) empowerment research impact case study in the context of an Australian Research Council (ARC) pilot research impact assessment exercise and the challenges involved in applying the ARC criteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResilience is a strengths-based construct that is useful for understanding differences in health and wellbeing among youth. There are a range of validated survey instruments available to measure resilience for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter respectfully Indigenous) youth. However, standard international instruments should only be used if they have been subjected to a rigorous cross-cultural adaptation process and psychometric evaluation in the target population to ensure their validity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContinuous quality improvement (CQI) processes for improving clinical care and health outcomes have been implemented by primary health-care services, with resultant health-care impacts. But only 10-20% of gain in health outcomes is contributed by health-care services; a much larger share is determined by social and cultural factors. This perspective paper argues that health care and health outcomes can be enhanced through applying CQI as a systems approach to comprehensive primary health care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Health Serv Res
April 2018
Background: Addressing health workforce cultural competence is a common approach to improving health service quality for culturally and ethnically diverse groups. Research evidence in this area is primarily focused on cultural competency training and its effects on practitioners' knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviour. While improvements in measures of healthcare practitioner cultural competency and other healthcare outcomes have been reported, there are concerns around evidence strength and quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A healthy start predicts better health in later life. Many remote-living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian families lack access to consistent, culturally-safe health services. This paper presents a study of implementation of the Baby One Program (BOP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Spreading proven or promising Aboriginal health programs and implementing them in new settings can make cost-effective contributions to a range of Aboriginal Australian development, health and wellbeing, and educational outcomes. Studies have theorized the implementation of Aboriginal health programs but have not focused explicitly on the conditions that influenced their spread. This study examined the broader political, institutional, social and economic conditions that influenced negotiations to transfer, implement, adapt, and sustain one Aboriginal empowerment program-the Family Wellbeing (FWB) program-to at least 60 geographical sites across Australia over 24 years.
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