Indigenous Community Members as Teachers of Indigenous Health

Indigenous health is an important issue in the Australian community. A number of educational bodies and providers of general practice training have nominated indigenous health education as a high priority. They recommend the involvement of local indigenous communities for cross cultural education and training of medical students and general practice registrars.

Although there are strong recommendations for the involvement of local indigenous community members in health professional education, a literature review yielded limited published material directly relating to this topic. A community report documented a discussion among Victorian Universities and indigenous organisations on the issue of the content and processes of cultural education and training of health professionals and medical students. They discussed why and how teaching was ‘good or bad’ and highlighted barriers to effective teaching of Koori issues.

There is no research that asks indigenous community members about their feeling toward their role as teaching in health education programs. This project asked community members what their needs are and what issues are important to them when teaching health proffesionals.