Sally Fitzpatrick

For the reconciliation process to be successful, professionals working in the domain of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health promotion must remember that it is not only which programs are carried out, but how they are carried out. The 'how' involves protocols that are based on fundamental human rights, not the least of which is the right to the highest attainable standard of health. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, these basic human rights are indissolubly linked to the right to self determination and the right to development. Four human rights principles of engagement are necessary for the process of reconciliation to be successful. These are: no discrimination; progressive realisation; effective participation; and effective remedies. This paper outlines these principles and presents two frameworks that have been developed to redress Indigenous disadvantage: the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission's Integrated Capacity Building Fra...

The first step in breaking the vicious cycle of disadvantage and empowering young indigenous Australians is to look at our communities' circumstances through a different lens. Research by Muru Marri reported in The Social and Emotional Wellbeing of Indigenous Youth: Reviewing and Extending the Evidence and Examining its Implications for Policy and Practice captures the elements that led to the success programs that seek to promote the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous young people. This report was launched at UNSW’s symposium on Indigenous health research: Dreaming up the Future of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Public Health, which was held on Friday, 11 October. The research was funded by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Commonwealth Government of Australia, Canberra, ACT. In kind support from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW.

There is a need to nurture multidisciplinary health professionals who have the capacity to contribute to the complex challenges of addressing Indigenous health inequalities. This was recently acknowledged in the National Indigenous Public Health Framework, which sets out core competencies for working in Aboriginal health for postgraduate public health programs. This paper outlines a pilot project prompted by the framework, in the Master of Public Health at the University of New South Wales and its approach using scenario-based learning.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander concepts of social and emotional wellbeing have long informed national policy and medical practice guidelines (NATSILMH 2018). However, little attention has been given as to how public health educators can best instil in multidisciplinary groups of professionals an understanding of, and the skills to apply, such concepts. According to Delany and others, transformative approaches that stimulate an examination of different perspectives and values are required (Delany et al. 2016; NHMRC 2018). This case study describes the application of such an approach through embedding Stage One of the Family Well Being (FWB) program in the 13-week postgraduate ‘Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Across the Lifespan’ (Lifespan) course delivered by the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at UNSW Sydney each year between 2011 and 2015. It explores students’ responses to FWB as a transformative learning tool, and its role in ‘changing the lens’ through whic...

Introduction: Programs that operate from a strengths-based, positive promotion approach to strengthen health, wellbeing and social cohesion have been shown to be effective interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and populations. However, despite a recent proliferation of such programs aimed at young people, rigorous evaluation that is empowering to participants is not demonstrated in the literature. The Ngala Nanga Mai pARenT Group Program, an innovative community health parent program, which utilises group artmaking sessions as a tool for engagement and building confidence, aims to positively influence young parents and their families by providing educational and social networking opportunities, and highly accessible health services. The first formal case study of the pARenT Group Program is currently underway. This report documents the methodological exploration undertaken to develop an appropriate research approach, describes baseline quantitative and qualitative findings and makes key recommendations for ways in which the program can be strengthened. Methodology and methods: Care was taken to develop a participatory mixed methods approach appropriate and empowering to individual and organisational participants. Quantitative research processes included: analysis of routinely collected program data; collection and analysis of survey data from three formal measures (the Growth and Empowerment Measure, a measure of participant self-esteem and community connectedness; and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Social-Emotional; and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, to measure childhood social and emotional development). Qualitative research processes included: collection and analysis of focus group, semi-structured interview and testimonial data. Findings and discussion of the implementation process: Initial findings on children’s health status, parental wellbeing and childhood social-emotional development are included in this report, as are categories arising from baseline qualitative data, which explore program establishment steps, transitions and adaptations over time, current processes, program impacts and strengths, program challenges for effectiveness, growth and sustainability, the program’s true potential and what it needs to be able to fulfil this potential. Triangulation, reflexivity and respondent validation employed to increase rigour are also described; and reflections are made on the qualitative data collection process. Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that this study was appropriately designed and worked successfully within the Ngala Nanga Mai pARenT Group Program to provide initial evidence of its strengths and impacts on participants. It also identified important challenges faced by the program and possible ways forward so that it can continue sustainability in its provision of empowering opportunities for young parents

The Ngala Nanga Mai pARenT Group Program is an arts based community health program for young parents of Aboriginal children situated at an Aboriginal Community Health Centre in Sydney and run by the Sydney Children’s Hospital. The program emerged through the community’s commitment to support young families facing adverse environmental factors, cultural dislocation, isolation, intergenerational grief and loss and lower levels of access to mainstream services that often underlie poorer health and social outcomes for Aboriginal parents and children. This paper details the development and implementation of this participatory arts based program, which aims to increase social and emotional wellbeing, access to services, health literacy, empowerment strategies and educational opportunities among participants. The program is based on the transformational capacity of art and embraces the values of a democratic and participatory learning framework. Through arts based exploration of identity a...

Racism and lack of self-determination in health care perpetuate injury and injustice to Aboriginal people. To instil cultural safety at individual, organisational, community and systems levels, a key site of action has been health professional education that seeks to elicit reflexivity, cultural humility and a working understanding of Aboriginal health concepts. Studies in Aboriginal community settings show Family Well Being (FWB) empowerment education is effective in supporting personal and collective reflexivity and transformation through empowering life skills development. Implementation of FWB within educational settings shows early signs of effectiveness among students. Yet knowledge of the steps and processes of student change is lacking. This mixed methods explanatory case study sought to measure and understand change in postgraduate students of a leading Australian university learning about Aboriginal health and wellbeing through blended delivery, including through face-to-face immersion in FWB in an urban classroom. Three interrelated studies investigated fidelity and acceptability of the program, measured and analysed growth and empowerment in students, and explained processes of change observed, through thematic analysis of asynchronous online discussions using lenses based on transformative learning and empowerment. Researcher reflexivity was promoted by Aboriginal supervision. Over six years, 194 students enrolled in two different Aboriginal public health courses, 85 of them in the FWB course. As well as achieving program fidelity and acceptability, pre/post-course change in students across a range of emotional empowerment, personal growth and life-long learning processes was measured in the FWB group. Thematic analysis revealed students? fluid and recursive processes of transformative learning in their professional selves and capacities to act in domains important to Aboriginal health. This case study contributes new knowledge critical to strengthening health professional capabilities for ever more complex, uncertain and emotionally demanding sites of practice, and to work in empowering ways?with, not for, Aboriginal people and communities.