Press & Policy - Central Australian Aboriginal Congress

Congress has a long involvement in health research, creating an impressive body of published material and critical comment.

Often the targets of other people’s research agendas, Aboriginal people, through Congress, aim to define a new research agenda. This agenda focuses on our needs and on the impacts of other agencies most notably government policies on Aboriginal health rather than on individual people’s behaviour.

The Report of the Community Health Model: Health by the People (1976), Health Business and Settle Down Country (1983), Borning: Pmere Laltyeke Anwerne Ampe Mpwaretyeke. Congress by the Grandmothers Law (1987), Living on Medicine and On the Machine (1988), Beyond the Maze (1994) and Health Promotion or Self-promotion? (1994) all illustrate the power of Aboriginal controlled and identified research and remain seminal works in their respective fields.

Congress has articulated a strong research reform agenda, challenging the behaviours and assumptions of non-indigenous researchers engaged in research around Aboriginal people, their health and lives, setting out clear guidelines for the necessary approach to working with Aboriginal people. This includes calling for true partnership, recognition of Aboriginal peoples leadership and knowledge in the health arena, respect for community and individual rights and the importance of research transfer, in both knowledge and skills.

Congress has partnered other research institutions in the CRC for Aboriginal and Tropical Health (1997) and its successor, the CRC for Aboriginal Health (2003), which involves industry and research institutions from around Australia. A majority Aboriginal Board, with a research agenda that well reflects the values pursued by Congress since its inception, directs the CRC-AH.

Congress is also an active partner in a host of other inter agency research projects and maintains its own independent research capability including a strong commitment to Aboriginal social history research.

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Gaining recognition that Aboriginal community-controlled health services are the most effective means of delivering primary health care (PHC), and securing adequate government funding have always been key aims of Congress. This model of PHC has been endorsed by the WHO, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody, and a wide range of government and academic inquiries.

Congress and other Aboriginal organisations worked hard for the development of the National Aboriginal Health Strategy. The NAHS identified access to primary health care, community-control and intersectoral collaboration as major principles for guiding Aboriginal health policy. Due to severe under funding, its recommendations have never been effectively implemented. This, coupled with the lack of collaboration by bureaucracies involved in service planning and delivery, created considerable barriers to Aboriginal health improvement. In 1993 Congress initiated and led a campaign to move beyond this administrative maze.

This community led campaign achieved the transfer of health service funding to the well resourced Commonwealth Department of Health and for the establishment of regional health planning forums under the Framework Agreements in Aboriginal Health. Thus creating a policy aimed at achieving health funding that was equitable and that could be accessed by all Aboriginal people. The Framework Agreements set out the roles and responsibilities of governments, ATSIC and the community-controlled sector in health service planning, laying the groundwork for a co-ordinated approach. These reforms coupled with the Primary Health Care Access Program have set a policy framework, that when effectively implemented by all parties will lead to new growth in Aboriginal community-controlled PHC services in the NT.

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