University of Melbourne Researchers Update Current Data on Public Health (Walking the talk: evaluating the alignment between Australian governments’ stated principles for working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health contexts and …)

2020 DEC 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on public health is the subject of a new report. According to news originating from the University of Melbourne by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “Stated principles in government policy documents serve as a set of values outlining how governments intend to work. As such, health planning principles should be reflected in health policy across the cycle of planning, implementation and evaluation.”

Funders for this research include Lowitja Institute.

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from University of Melbourne: “Such principles should be reflected in the process of governments commissioning and funding evaluation, and in the work of those commissioned to do evaluation on behalf of governments. We reviewed health planning policy documents to identify principles Australian State and Territory and National governments stated as being important to the work they do within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health contexts. Evaluation tenders and reports relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy, programs and service for the period 1-Jan-2007 to 1-Jan-2017 were retrieved and assessed as to whether they embedded principles governments state as important. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health planning policy contexts, Australian governments outline shared responsibility, cultural competence, engagement, partnership, capacity building, equity, a holistic concept of health, accountability, and evidence-based as fundamental principles that will underpin the work they will do. In total, we identified 390 publicly advertised evaluation tenders, but were only able to retrieve 18 tenders and 97 reports. Despite strong rhetoric placing importance on the abovementioned principles, these were not consistently embedded in tenders released by government commissioners, nor in reports largely commissioned by governments. Principles most widely incorporated in documents were those corresponding to Closing the Gap - accountability, evidence-based and equity. Principles of holistic concept of health, capacity building, cultural competence and partnership do not appear well applied in evaluation practice.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Notwithstanding the tensions and criticism of current practice that sees dominant governments policing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and defining what principles should inform health policy and evaluation practice, this paper reveals shortcomings in current evaluation practice. Firstly, this paper reveals a lack of transparency about current practice, with only 2% of tenders and 25% of reports in the public domain. Secondly, this paper reveals that governments do not ‘walk the talk’, particularly when it comes to principles relating to Aboriginal participation in health.”

For more information on this research see: Walking the talk: evaluating the alignment between Australian governments’ stated principles for working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health contexts and health evaluation practice. BMC Public Health, 2020,20(1):1-11. (BMC Public Health - http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Public Health is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09983-w.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Joanne N. Luke, Evaluation and Implementation Science Unit, Center for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population & Global Health, University of Melbourne. Additional authors for this research include Angeline S. Ferdinand, Yin Paradies, Daniel Chamravi, Margaret Kelaher.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)