Program leaders: Judith Dwyer / Alwin Chong
Program manager: Arwen Nikolof
Goal: To develop knowledge and evaluate tools and resources that will enable the users of research to reform health system policy and administration and improve capacity to implement programs effectively.
What’s the program about?
‘Enabling Policy and Systems’ addresses the fundamental constraints and challenges that contribute to poor performance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy and programs.
Previous research conducted with the support of our predecessor organisation, the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, and others has highlighted the complex administrative and governance environments within which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services operate.
While there is no estimate of how much health system dysfunction contributes to the health gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians, it is clear that greater administrative and operational efficiencies will pave the way for improved provision of health care to Australia’s First Peoples.
The program’s ultimate aim is to improve the capacity of health care providers to implement programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people more effectively.
Scope
Research and capacity building activity will be undertaken across three main areas:
- Decision-making and policy and program planning and implementation by governments.
- The capacity, composition and structure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workforce.
- Organisational effectiveness in Aboriginal community controlled health services as well as other health care providers.
The program will also address the macro-system issues influencing whether and how to use outputs that are produced in the other two key CRCATSIH Program areas – Healthy Start, Healthy Life; and Healthy Communities and Settings.
Stakeholders
The primary end-users of Program 3 outputs will be managers and decision makers in:
- Australian governments
- health authorities
- professional and industry bodies
- Aboriginal community controlled health services and other health care providers
- educational institutions
- workforce recruitment and development agencies
- providers of information/communication technology.
Research
Active projects
- Administering the Aboriginal community controlled health sector for public value and robust accountability
- Collaboration supporting a nationally accessible MPH specialisation in Indigenous health
- Disparities in lung cancer care and outcomes in New South Wales (PhD thesis)
- Flexible Career Pathways for the Aboriginal Health Workforce
- Funding, accountability and results for Aboriginal health services – Closing the policy implementation gap? (FAR Project)
- Identifying the compliance requirements for Aboriginal Community Controlled Cooperatives in Victoria
- Measuring quality of inpatient care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- Managing two worlds together: City hospital care for country Aboriginal people (in-kind project)
- Models of rapid synthesis – Australian Aboriginal health search portal
- Negotiating accountability: Trust in the relationship between an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and Australian Government funding staff (in-kind project)
- Options for enduring government responsibility for Aboriginal health
- Planning, Implementation and Effectiveness (PIE) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Policy Reform (Phase 2)
- Reducing Australia’s Aboriginal prisoner population using Justice Reinvestment – assessing the public’s views to incarceration versus non-incarceration alternatives using a Citizens’ Jury approach
- Support for Aboriginal Health Council SA (AHCSA) Certificate IV course in Indigenous research capacity
- Telling the good stories (PhD thesis)
- Understanding resilience and recovery from trauma in an urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community (PhD thesis)
Completed projects
- Improving the culture of hospitals for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- Legally Invisible – Options for enduring government responsibility for Aboriginal health
- The Overburden project – Funding and regulation of primary health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- The role of planning processes in implementing National Partnership Agreements in Indigenous health: understanding process and evaluating effectiveness
- Support systems for quality Indigenous primary health care
- Workforce Roundtable