The Australian Government is investing almost $11 million to build Australian research capacity in climate change and related health impacts through the National Health and Medical Research Council.
In an announcement yesterday by the Hon Ged Kearney MP, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health, UCRH’s Associate Professor Veronica Matthews was awarded $795,099 for a five-year project called Coming home, making home, valuing home: A health and wellbeing evidence-base for Aboriginal cultural and climate appropriate community-designed homes.
This project will measure and evaluate – in line with Aboriginal worldviews – wellbeing outcomes from the Wilya Janta model of co-designed culturally safe and climate appropriate homes. For too long, remote Aboriginal communities have lived with poor quality housing not suited to their culture and now worsening climate extremes. The evidence this project uncovers will support transferability and scalability to other remote communities to improve housing and health outcomes and build resilience to the changing climate.
The project, supported by CSIRO and the Hunter Medical Research Institute, is an extension of work already being done by UCRH team members with Wilya Janta. This includes the Healing Country project which is working on capturing stories, traditional knowledge and quantitative data to help develop digital story-data maps that document environmental changes already impacting Aboriginal wellbeing in three locations across the country. One of these locations is Warumungu Country, Tennant Creek, where Wilya Janta is working to promote community agency in the design and construction of housing in Indigenous communities.
The funding announcement following a targeted Call for Research focused on climate-related health impacts and effective interventions to improve health outcomes. The grant opportunity aimed to fund research into better understanding the current and future impacts of climate change on the health and wellbeing of Australians and on health system demand.
The Coming home, making home, valuing home project meets the objectives of the funding round by building a stronger evidence base on Aboriginal-led housing solutions that strengthen culture and health outcomes, creating a template for cost and energy-efficient climate appropriate homes for communities across the country.

Above: model of a home appropriate to climate and culture.