With community involvement, research can be a powerful tool for closing the gap in Indigenous health disparity

Now, in the first decades of a new millennium, it is exciting and energising to find so many voices and forums converging to provide new perspectives on knowledge. At the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research, we see this as a unique opportunity to achieve positive, lasting change in the health and wellbeing of Australia’s first peoples.

The Lowitja Institute uses research as a powerful tool to generate synergies between the voices and knowledge of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. To do this effectively, we employ methods and approaches that were first developed at the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Aboriginal and Tropical Health and refined over 15 years through its successor CRCs.