Report from Caitlyn White, 6th Year BMP Scholar at the University of Western Australia
From May 14-15 eleven students and junior doctors with the Bonded Support Program attended the Lowitja Institute National Conference on Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care in Alice Springs. Despite the chilly desert mornings, I think we all thoroughly enjoyed spending some time in the heart of Australia.

We attended two days of academic programs including plenary sessions and smaller workshops. It was an honour to mingle with fellow students, doctors, nurses, Aboriginal health workers and organisation executives who all work in or have an interest in Aboriginal primary health care. We learnt a lot about the process of and ideas behind audits and other ways to collect data to monitor how different programs or initiatives in primary health care centres are working, so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander healthcare can continually be improved.

It was good to see that as Australia continues to try and close the gap in health care outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, new and existing initiatives are always being evaluated to ensure that our practice is based on what is going to work.

Highlights included hearing from Donna Ah Chee, the CEO of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and Tony Lembke, a GP in Alstonville NSW, who spoke about collaborating to implement quality improvement in primary care and had some great advice based on his experiences at his clinic. 

The highlight of the conference for me was hearing about an initiative in Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory tackling foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). As we await the results of the first Australian FASD prevalence study (the Lililwan project) conducted in the Fitzroy valley, in Tenant Creek they have been working on ways to let the community know the effects of alcohol on babies, in an effort to reduce the rates of FASD seen. High school students in Tenant Creek wrote, recorded and filmed a song about FASD. It’s a great tune and video that the whole town apparently knows about, with a great message. I’d encourage you to check it out on youtube- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWzQ83i6OcU, or look up IHHP Tennant Creek.

Lowitja National Conference
The Lowitja Institute 2012 National Conference on Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care: 'CQI for everyday and everybody', was held on 14-15 May 2012 at the Alice Springs Convention Centre. For further information, visit The Lowitja Institute website www.lowitja.org.au