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Healthway has announced funding for the ‘Working together to reduce the harms from alcohol and other drug use in an Aboriginal community-controlled primary care health context’ research project.

The National Drug Research Institute-led study aims to improve existing approaches to AOD use care in the South West Aboriginal Medical Services, a WA Aboriginal community-controlled primary health care service.

The study will be the first of its kind to apply a continuous quality improvement approach to address AOD issues in an Aboriginal community controlled primary health setting, with a model of care to be co-designed with the local community and Services staff. Central to the study will be an ‘all-teach-all-learn approach’ that draws on expertise from local Aboriginal people and primary care staff as well as Aboriginal and non-Indigenous researchers.

It is the second project in NDRI’s Aboriginal Mental Health and Substance Use research program to be funded in recent weeks.
Led by colleagues at Curtin University, the ‘Treating co-occurring substance use disorder and mental illness among Indigenous people released from prison’ project received funding under the Federal Government’s Indigenous Justice Research Program.

“Over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the criminal justice system is a multifaceted issue, and we must do everything we can to address the drivers, in a culturally informed and coordinated way,” Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt said in announcing the funding.