Connecting for impact: building, and learning from, a community resilience alliance across the Northern Rivers
The Northern Rivers region of NSW is on the front line of the climate crisis, with compounding weather-related disasters in recent years including catastrophic floods and landslips in 2022. Place-based grassroots resilience groups were pivotal in emergency and recovery efforts in the aftermath of the 2022 disaster. Through these groups, community members (predominantly women) made […]
Understanding connections between disaster management agencies and informal (grassroots) community groups in the Northern Rivers
This project aimed to better understand the evolution of the connections between formal disaster management agencies and informal community groups prior to, during and after the catastrophic Northern Rivers floods and landslides of February/March 2022. Recognising the increasingly significant role played by informal (grassroots) community groups in disaster management, the research sought to identify barriers […]
Stronger Together As Unified Nations for Community-led Health (STAUNCH)
STAUNCH’s vision is to strengthen First Nation’s capacity for self-governance and prepare policymakers for new relationship-based approaches focused on collaborative health solutions that deal with intersecting social, political, economic, and environmental challenges – centring Nations as the source of policy and program solutions. Foregrounding place-based knowledges, we are working alongside Aboriginal Nations (Gugu Badhun, Jirrbal, […]
Coming home, Making home, Valuing home
Despite many years of investment and policies to increase and improve remote Aboriginal housing, the community of Tennant Creek continue to experience insufficient and substandard public housing. Infectious diseases linked to poor housing and overcrowding are chronically present and are being exacerbated by increasingly hot weather; and housing layouts restrict cultural practice. Newly constructed public […]
Determinants of high-quality health professions student placements in regional, rural and remote Australia
In rural areas, work-integrated learning in the form of health student placements has several potential benefits, including contributing to student learning, enhancing rural health service capacity and attracting future rural health workforce. Understanding what constitutes a high-quality rural placement experience is important for enhancing these outcomes. There is no current standardised definition of quality in […]
Health and wellbeing implications of housing displacement due to river flooding in high income countries: a scoping review
The aim of this scoping review is to describe the scope of published research on the health and wellbeing impacts of being displaced from home by river floods and requiring alternative emergency, temporary and longer-term housing for people living in countries with higher levels of social and economic development.
Immediate and ongoing impacts of COVID-19 on rural clinical placements for allied health, nursing and medical students
In this study we are exploring the immediate and ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural placements for allied health, nursing, and medical students in 2020 and again in 2021/2022. This project is a collaborative project with a range of University Departments of Rural Health across Australia and is supported by the Australian Rural Health […]
Climate-change and health professional education
As the climate warms, weather-related disasters will increase and the potential for health students to be impacted by such disasters while on placement should not be underestimated. Understanding health students’ needs during and following weather-related disasters is crucial for developing appropriate support systems and preparing the future health workforce. This program of work examines the […]
Improving access to primary care for people with an intellectual disability
People with intellectual disability experience poorer health outcomes compared with the general population, partly due to the difficulties of accessing primary care. This program of work focuses on ways it may be possible to improve access to primary care for people with an intellectual disability in Australia. The projects aim to: enhance access to primary […]
An Innovation Platform to Strengthen Primary Health Care Systems for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: A Methodologically Pluralist Evaluation
Innovation platforms bring together diverse stakeholders to exchange ideas about addressing challenging problems. The inherent complex nature of innovation platforms poses challenges for evaluators, and although it is recommended that multiple evaluation methods be used, this is not commonly done in practice. In this study we used a methodologically pluralist approach to evaluate and iteratively […]
