Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing

The Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Team follows a holistic definition of Aboriginal Health which means that health is not just the physical wellbeing of an individual but includes the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing of the whole community.

The Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Team links directly to research teams across the three research focus areas.

It is within the whole community that each individual is able to achieve their full potential as a human being thereby bringing about an improvement in the total wellbeing of their community. This whole-of-life view includes the cyclical concept of life-death-life and that everything is everything and everything is connected.

Beneath this, our team has a commitment to work with the building block of Aboriginal life - family. Where the roles of men and women are key in the growing up of children and young people, as are all family members including Grandparents and Aunties and Uncles and Elders.

The role of Elders is to provide stability and the overarching link across, and within, the family and across other family groups. It is this kinship which gives everyone a place and a relationship to all others and a connection to country. The Elders are a connection between the past and the present and it is through their wisdom and experience that the community takes on the challenges of life.

Our team also recognises that there is an historical backdrop to the relationship between black and white Australia that continues to influence the current and future generations of Aboriginal people.

Today, Aboriginal children and families experience the poorest health and wellbeing of all Australians.

A combination of intergenerational trauma and limitations of past and present health, education and economic policies require a new approach where research can provide both the evidence and means to bring together key stakeholders to resolve complex problems.

The Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Team led by Glenn Pearson (Head, Aboriginal Health Research), Dr Brad Farrant and Dr Carrington Shepherd, has taken an across-program approach to responding to these complex problems drawing on a broad range of research and methodologies bringing together community, government and researchers.

Team Highlights

• Securing important Category 1 grants in recent years, worth approximately $3m to continue the development of the research program and team.
• Continued development and application of Participatory Action Research methods with Aboriginal stakeholders, including processes that have brought together over 50 Aboriginal Noongar Elders to discuss and guide our early child development initiatives.
• Development and conduct of a series of linked administrative health projects, including those conducted with national and international collaborators.