Leadership
The NIHLA objectives are:
- Eliminating Racism (to improve health outcomes)
- Asserting Self-determination and First Peoples Rights
- Lead collective decision-making in national health policy
- Asserting investment in the Social Determinants of Health
- Asserting the Cultural Determinants of Health.
These objectives reflect the work of the NIHLA since its inception. The priorities reflect our work and will remain until such time that we see truth telling and genuine respect for the First Nations People of Australia. Accordingly, the priorities for the foreseeable future are:
Our Priorities
1. System-wide monitoring, reporting and investment for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan.
- We call for investment and truth full accountability in the reporting of the Health Plan to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the public.
2. System-wide monitoring, reporting and investment for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workforce Strategic Framework and Implementation Plan.
- We call for investment and truth full accountability in the reporting on this Workforce Plan to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and the public.
3. Self-determination across our national institutions.
The legal and political reform, along with the cultural determinants of health are at the heart of achieving self-determination across our national institutions through supporting the recommendations that arose from the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Self-determination across all aspects of government and public policy will improve outcomes across all socioeconomic indicators in time.
- The NIHLA calls for all Australian governments to support and enact the Priority Reforms under the National Agreement to Closing the Gap.
4. Addressing systemic racism
To achieve the Health Plan’s vision, governments and non-government organisations must embed culturally safe ways of practice including listening and following the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities determining what they need and want to do.
Cultural safety is a mechanism to address racism and must be embedded into our corporate and non-for-profit sectors. Without doing so, means that the values and ethics of organisations are not scrutinize sufficiently to stamp out discrimination and discriminatory policies, procedures, and practices of staff.
- The NIHLA calls for coordinated and long-term action to eliminate racism and discrimination without our institutions.
5. Investment in the social determinants of health especially those that have greatest impact on health outcomes – housing, justice, climate change and investment in services.
Genuine needs-based funding and accountability is essential to achieving equity in health and access to culturally safe care. This funding must cut across the social determinants of health as the intersection of these elements have a real – truthful – impact on peoples physical, social, mental health, and social and emotional well-being.
- The NIHLA calls for genuine needs-based funding for the social determinants of health
Health Justice
Australia has had many coronial inquests into the preventable deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. These inquests continue to reveal the ongoing deficiencies of both our health and justice systems. Coronial inquests examining the preventable deaths of Indigenous peoples attending health care services, combined with over a decade of policy failure to close the gap of health inequality, have highlighted how the health system – independently of the legal system – produces discriminatory practices based on the bigotry of the workforce. Examining systemic racism must be part of all coronial inquiries for First Nations peoples.
- The NIHLA calls for social justice and human rights-based approaches to be the normal practice within law enforcement and justice systems.
Climate change
The impact of Climate Change in Australia on the health and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples is growing in its seriousness and importance for the NIHLA. Substantial health inequalities endure between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous Australians in key areas of health such as life expectancy, chronic and communicable diseases, child and maternal health and mental health. These disparities re compounded and perpetuated through the inequities of care for country and the impact of climate change in Australia.
- The NIHLA calls genuine investment in and support for solutions that are locally identified to address climate change.