The Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS) carried out a
study of the health and concerns of young urban Aboriginal people.
The purpose of the study was to help inform VAHS (and services more
broadly) about how to best provide healthcare to young Aboriginal
people. Local young Aboriginal people were involved in helping to
design and carry out the study, and a number of those have now gone
on to become highly successful researchers or public health
workers. (For example, Paul Stewart, now based at Melbourne
University’s Onemda.)
The project was extremely successful in engaging young urban
Aboriginal people to talk about often-sensitive issues. The advice
provided from young people in the development of the project meant
that the methods used were creative and appropriate, allowing young
people to answer questions or raise issues in ways that were
comfortable for them.
The study produced a wide range of community reports that have
been used by VAHS, other community organisations and government
agencies to understand the issues facing young urban Aboriginal
people, and to plan services that meet their needs.
The full story of the study has been published in the journal
Social Science and Medicine. It is an inspiring story of
how research can be useful to organisations and communities. The
reference details are:
Wendy Holmes, Paul Stewart, Anne Garrow, Ian
Anderson and Lisa Thorpe, et al., 2002, 'Researching
Aboriginal health: experience from a study of urban young people's
health and
well-being', Social Science and Medicine,
vol. 54, no. 8, pp.1267–79.
The CRC for Aboriginal Health is now supporting VAHS to make
further use of the data collected during this project. For more
information about this project, go to the summary
page.
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