Bulletin

Issue: March 2004

News

Fine tuning management of Aboriginal health services

La Trobe University is participating in a project funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health to enhance governance in Aboriginal health services.

Jointly led by Associate Professor Judith Dwyer, Head of the Department of Health Policy and Management of La Trobe University's School of Public Health, the project is part of a $1.3 million boost to Aboriginal health research.

Associate Professor Dwyer, her joint project leader, Associate Professor Cindy Shannon of the University of Queensland, and PhD student Ms Leisa McCarthy, have been awarded $252, 678 for research to strengthen governance and management of Aboriginal health services.

Working with a group of practicing managers of Aboriginal health services, the team will explore the problems and challenges these managers face, and use the information gained as the basis for a subsequent program of applied research.

The CRC for Aboriginal Health was launched in August 2003 to coordinate research in Aboriginal communities and laboratories, researching treatments for diseases and conditions, as well as the effectiveness of existing health services.

Associate Professor Dwyer said that managers of Aboriginal health services were constantly negotiating between the informal, traditional relationships and ways of working of the Aboriginal community and the formal requirements of incorporated bodies receiving public funding.

She said the research would not start from a 'deficit model', focussing on skills, experience or commitment that are seen to be lacking, but rather would work with Aboriginal managers to understand the management and governance challenges they face while working in the contested 'inter-cultural world' occupied by Aboriginal health services.

The project is one of the first seven the new CRC has funded.

Announcing the grants, the CRC's chairperson, Ms Pat Anderson, said the projects, in going beyond the boundaries of the Northern Territory, demonstrated the national scope of the CRC for Aboriginal Health.

She said making health systems work more effectively was as important as finding better treatment for chronic diseases and sustainable and affordable cures for infectious diseases.

'It is also important for research to involve collaboration between institutions and to cross disciplines to draw out fresh perspectives,' Ms Anderson said.

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