Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit
The CHS encompasses the Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit (formerly the VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Unit) which works to bring together the academy, the community and policy-makers around issues of Koori health. The Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (Research and Community Affairs Committees), the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, and the University of Melbourne provided core funding to establish the Unit in June 1999. The Unit has also supplemented this funding from other sources in line with its agreed strategies. A strategic plan, and linked research plan, was developed in late 1999 with core funding agencies and key stakeholders, including Aboriginal community organisations, such as the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO).
The Unit has been developed within a community development framework. This has shaped our approach to the development of our research and teaching program. Given the history of exploitative academic practices in relation to Aboriginal communities this has been fundamental to developing trusting, respectful relations with Victorian Koori communities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples more generally. In practice, this means that our activities are developed in a way that: supports Koori control and self-determination; increases the capacity of Koori communities to address health and social disadvantage; promotes the social, cultural and economic development of Koori communities; facilitates ethical practices that both protect and value Koori people and knowledge; shares knowledge, information and skills with Koori people and communities; and, finally, engages in research and activities that will bring benefit to Koori people. Underlying this is an approach focused on enabling Koori communities and people to realise their own vision.
In practice this has meant that the Unit has developed collaborations and partnerships with a number of Aboriginal people and organisations, including: VACCHO, with whom we have developed a Memorandum of Understanding; the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service; Koorie Cultural Heritage Trust; Institute of Koorie Education (Deakin University); Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service; Loddon Mallee Aboriginal Reference Group; and the Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. We have also worked with a number of non-Aboriginal organisations on Aboriginal-related projects such as: the Australian Institute of Primary Care at La Trobe University; the Menzies School of Health Research; and the Centre for Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. It has also been important for us to develop working relationships with the key policy stakeholders in Aboriginal health: Koori Services Unit at the Department of Humans Services; and the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing.
Onemda has developed a platform for a Koori primary health services research agenda within the context of a health systems research program . In building a health systems approach to the primary health services research, the Onemda research focuses on the development of Koori health policy, the relationship between primary health care delivery and the delivery of related health and community services, and the research, evaluation and workforce development infrastructure that underpins effective primary health care.