• Aboriginal-led schools program teaches healthy habits for life
• Strengthening the Visiting Optometrists Scheme: A 50-Year Vision
• Radio interview – Triple M Hobart – Womens healthcare access
• Professor Michael Wear makes history as first winner of Prime Minister’s Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems
• 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.

Aboriginal-led schools program teaches healthy habits for life

‘Our Healthy Kids’, a culturally safe, Aboriginal-led primary school program is supporting Aboriginal young people in NSW to strengthen their knowledge of health and wellbeing and develop lifelong healthy habits.

More than 5,000 children have participated in the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council program, which is being supported by an Aboriginal Affairs NSW ‘Delivering Better Outcomes’ grant.
“Teaching all children about health-related topics from a younger age encourages them to think critically about healthier choices and starts a positive shift for the next generation. It gives them access to information I never received in school, setting them up with knowledge and habits that can shape their futures.”

Read the full article.

Strengthening the Visiting Optometrists Scheme: A 50-Year Vision

When an optometrist flies into a small outback airstrip or drives hours across red dirt roads to reach a remote clinic, they’re not just providing an eye test; they’re restoring independence, education, and wellbeing to people who might otherwise go years without care. For fifty years, the Visiting Optometrists Scheme (VOS) has quietly delivered this lifeline across Australia’s most isolated communities, ensuring access to eye care where geography and circumstance might otherwise deny it.

Last week, as National Rural Health Month approached, Optometry Australia (OA) hosted a celebration at Parliament House in Canberra to mark the VOS’s 50th anniversary. Federal parliamentarians, community leaders, sector stakeholders and outreach optometrists gathered to honour a program that, since 1975, has helped prevent avoidable blindness and bridged one of the starkest divides in the nation’s health system: access to vision care.

Read the full article.

Radio interview – Triple M Hobart – Womens healthcare access

TUBES (HOST): We are joined by the Federal Labor and Member for Lyons, the Assistant Minister for Women, Health and Aged Care and Indigenous Health –  Rebecca White, good morning.

REBECCA WHITE: Morning Tubes, morning Kaz, thanks for having me on.

TUBES: There’s been a big announcement on November 1 with further changes to the Medicare Benefits Scheme that will give women more contraceptive choice by making it cheaper and easier to access IUDs and contraceptive implants. Rebecca White, tell us why that’s important for Tasmanian women.

REBECCA WHITE: It’s important because women shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get the health care they need. And I think for so long, women have felt a bit dismissed, not really listened to, and a little bit stigmatised when they want to talk about things like contraception.

So this is a change that is going to make it cheaper and easier for women in Tassie right around the country, to access the contraceptives that they would like to choose, as opposed to what their bank balance can afford.

Listen to the full radio interview.

Professor Michael Wear makes history as first winner of Prime Minister’s Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems

The inaugural Prime Minister’s Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems has been awarded to Malgana man, Professor Michael Wear.

Professor Wear is the founder of Tidal Moon, Australia’s first Indigenous-owned and led sea cucumber fishery and marine restoration enterprise, based in Shark Bay (Gutharraguda), Western Australia.

Under Professor Wear’s leadership, Tidal Moon is partnering with scientists to restore one of the largest seagrass meadows at the UNESCO Marine World Heritage Site of Shark Bay.

Drawing on his knowledge of Saltwater Country, culture and science, Professor Wear has developed a commercial fishery model for harvesting sea cucumbers, while also collecting conservation data through culturally directed methods.

Professor Wear told National Indigenous Times Tidal Moon has been working on “a model to scale up seagrass restoration by building human capital through our sea cucumber harvesting, and also the techniques of scaling that sea cucumber business as well”.

“We are bringing staff onshore from our offshore operations, and creating more employment opportunities. We are bringing that western science and Indigenous knowledge together through a larger project now,” he said.

Read the full article.

 

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.