• Community-led family violence responses needed
• Project aims to improve custodial healthcare for mob
• Health costs widen gap for rural, remote mob
• PSA Faye McMillan grant winners announced
• Genocide in the Wildflower State documentary
• $550k for Kempsey Her Futures Wellbeing project
• Sector Jobs

The NACCHO Sector News is a platform we use to showcase the important work being done in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, focusing on the work of NACCHO, NACCHO members and NACCHO affiliates.

We also share a curated selection of news stories that are of likely interest to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector, broadly.

Community-led family violence responses needed

In a recent article for the National Indigenous Times Dr Hannah McGlade says the federal government shocked and hurt Aboriginal women across Australia with its announcement on 28 May of an Expert Panel tasked with conducting a Rapid Review of violence against women, with a focus on the killings of women, with not one Aboriginal woman included as a member of the panel.

Considering Aboriginal women are at exceptionally high risk of violence and even murder and have been standing strong against violence for many decades, this was a serious oversight and concern. Now last week, with no consultation with Aboriginal women, WA Premier Roger Cook and Minister Sabine Winton announced new family violence laws to include coercive and controlling behaviour, as well as electronic monitoring of high-risk offenders.

Violence against Aboriginal women will never be addressed while Aboriginal women’s expertise and leadership is denied and undermined. It’s time all forms of violence are addressed, including racism and the imposition of yet more laws that carry unacceptable risk of harm to First Nations women and children.

To view the National Indigenous Times article Aboriginal community-led responses to family and domestic violence are needed, not more police powers in full click here.

Project aims to improve custodial healthcare for mob

At the end of January this year, Lynore Geia, Palm Island Bwgcolman woman and Professor of Nursing and Midwifery at Edith Cowan University, contacted NACCHO to request the dissemination of a letter via the NACCHO Sector News newsletter. It has only now come to light that this unfortunately did not occur.

The letter, available here, was written to inform Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members and families of a project initiated by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) titled An analysis of Coronial Tribunal findings of deaths in custodial settings of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander People that involved a nurse or midwife. The project is driven by a commitment to enhancing cultural safety and addressing health equity and racism as public health issues through improved nursing and midwifery care for our community members. The aim is to carefully examine the role of nurses and midwives in custodial settings.

This significant project is being undertaken by a diverse and skilled team, comprising four respected Aboriginal registered nurse researchers, namely Professors Lynore Geia (Bwgcolman), Roianne West (Kalkadoon, Djunke), Juanita Sherwood (Wiradjuri), and Janine Mohamed (Narrunga Kaurna); and three non-Indigenous registered nurse researchers – Professors Karen Strickland, Lisa Whitehead, and Dr. Belinda Lovell, along with Psychologist Professor Andrew Day, who specialises in criminology and psychology.

The project team has been carefully reviewing coroners reports from 2012 to 2022 that are publicly accessible through databases such as the Australasian Legal Information Institute website, State and Territory Coroner’s websites, and The Deaths in Custody Project. As health professionals the team is concerned that past and recent coronial inquires have raised questions around nursing and midwifery care where a nurse/midwife has been involved in the health care of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person who has died in custody. The primary purpose of the project is to analyse the nursing or midwifery care as described in the coroner’s reports to identify any areas that require change to improve the cultural safety of nursing and midwifery care of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custodial settings.

It is anticipated that this strategic work will significantly contribute to necessary reforms in nursing and midwifery care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custodial settings.

Health costs widen gap for rural, remote mob

From sleeping rough in parklands to skipping medical appointments, the additional burden of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure is widening the healthcare gap for Aboriginal households in rural and remote regions. The rising cost of living, including the need to travel long distances to medical appointments, as well as income limits and shortages of housing and medical services, also adds to the health burden on rural and remote communities.

In particular, Aboriginal families in remote regions face even higher out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure (or OOPHE) – which includes additional healthcare expenses not covered by universal taxpayer insurance (i.e. Medicare) – due to additional health needs and multiple barriers to getting appropriate care.

In a new article in Rural and Remote Health journal experts in Indigenous health worked closely with Aboriginal communities from SA’s Far West region to examine these impacts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a rate of potentially preventable hospitalizations 4.9 times greater than other Australians. Poor communication is a well-established risk factor contributing to adverse medicine events. For a medicine to be used effectively, treatment decisions need to be conveyed to consumers and their support people in ways they understand.

To view the Rural and Remote article Experiences and impacts of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure on remote Aboriginal families in full click here. 

PSA Faye McMillan grant winners announced

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) has announced the recipients of the second annual PSA Faye McMillan Conference Grant as Timothy Hockam, Elizabeth Dening, and Kirralee Natty.

Inspired and supported by Prof McMillan, the annual grant offers an opportunity for First Nations pharmacists to attend the PSA National Conference (PSA24) next month, which will foster their professional development.

McMillan, a Wiradjuri yinaa (woman) originally from Trangie, NSW, was the first Indigenous Australian to hold a western degree in pharmacy. She congratulated all the recipients and said, “belonging is such a critical aspect of being part of a profession, and the relationship with PSA gives that feeling”.

To view the Pharmacy Daily article McMillian grant winners in full click here.

Genocide in the Wildflower State documentary

Yokai (Western Australian Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation) support the needs of individuals and families in WA adversely affected by policies and practices of separating Aboriginal peoples from their families, communities, countries and cultures. Yokai’s Chairperson, Mr Jim Morrison, will be attending Parliament House in Canberra next week for the screening of their latest documentary Genocide in the Wildflower State.

The 60 minute documentary is about a violent, state-run system of eugenics, racial absorption, and social assimilation in Twentieth Century, WA. For the more than six decades between 1905 and 1970, thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children in WA were forcibly removed from their families. Systematically organised by the State, overwhelmingly supported by WA society, generation after generation, for over 60 years — the State worked to destroy Aboriginal families, culture, and language, for the purpose of securing white, settler dominance.

In 1997 a National Inquiry called this for what it was — Genocide. ‘Stolen Generation’ Survivors give vivid and at times heartbreaking testimony of cruel isolation, abuse and humiliation in the system. Their accounts are supported by documentary evidence from state records, public archives and historical scholarship. “Genocide in the Wildflower State” is truth telling and a demand for justice. It holds to account successive parliaments in WA that have failed to make redress. It is about helping to heal the trauma in the Survivor community, and building understanding in broader society.

Yokai, through Senator Sue Lines’s invitation here, are inviting Community and government employees to attend the documentary launch.

You can view the trailer to the Genocide in the Wildflower State documentary here. 

$550k for Kempsey Her Futures Wellbeing project

To view the NSW Government media release $2.6 million invested in women’s health, wellbeing and empowerment in full click here. 

Sector Jobs – you can see sector job listings on the NACCHO website here.

Advertising Jobs – to advertise a job vacancy click here to go to the NACCHO website current job listings webpage. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a Post A Job form. You can complete this form with your job vacancy details – it will then be approved for posting and go live on the NACCHO website.