AYRI 2023 Call for abstracts

Indigenous Health and Wellbeing

Around 32% of  Australians living in remote and very remote areas are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander compared to 1.8%  of the population in major cities. With lower life expectancies, higher burden of disease, poorer self-reported health, a higher likelihood of being hospitalised than non-Indigenous Australians, and poorer access to, and use of, primary health care services than people living in major cities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples bear a disproportionate burden of disease.

The recent First Nations Health Equity legislative reform in Queensland is seeking to address these health disparities with Queensland Health and the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council (QAIHC) leading change to achieve health equity, actively eliminate racial discrimination and institutional racism, and influence the social, cultural and economic determinants of health. Centering the voices, leadership and lived experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in driving the health equity reform agenda, the First Nations Health Equity agenda is a watershed in Queensland public health system policy. What does that mean for the bush?

 AYRI 2023 welcomes submissions on topics addressing health equity through:

• Indigenous health workforce development;
• Indigenous health improvement; and
• Indigenous health “in Indigenous hands”: including co-designed and co-implemented strategies.

Rescuing Rural Generalism

A focus of the 2023 AYRI conference in Mount Isa is the future of rural generalism. It is well known that there are workforce shortages in all health professions and access to health care in rural and remote areas is becoming much more difficult. The concept of rural generalism has been discussed for the last decade or two and the medical profession is more advanced, with well-defined training and career pathways facilitated by medical schools, specialty Colleges (ACRRM and RACGP) and Queensland Health.

Progress has been made in some of the allied health professions, while less has been achieved in nursing. Various workforce models have been suggested, but questions remain. How well is the medical RG pathway working? Is there a need for similar models in other health professions? Could Rural Health Multidisciplinary Teams assist health professionals to work to full scope? If so, how? Is the medical rural generalist model appropriate for other health professions or do we need different models? Should the rural generalist model be limited to only small town rural and remote communities (e.g. MM4-7)?  How do we keep the discussions away from turf wars between powerful national groups with vested interests? How can we avoid individual, potentially competitive 'role-substitution' models and focus on developing complementary interprofessional education teams?

Submissions on this theme are welcome.