Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

Content

Topics will include:

Context

• Indigenous Ways of Being, Knowing and Doing; Diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, cultures and languages;
• Histories, sovereignty and colonisation: pre and post-colonisation health, colonisation and settlement, protection and assimilation, early colonial policies
• Comparative health indicators and impact: Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) principles and responsible, strengths-based communication (e.g., countering deficit discourse, consented use of imagery). interpret data through strengths-based or Indigenous Data Sovereignty frames, burden of disease (including mental health and suicide, maternal and child health, non-communicable disease), mortality, morbidity, health service access, system mistrust

Determinants of Indigenous health

• Social, cultural and political determinants: housing, remoteness, education, employment, justice, culture, Country, racism, self-determination, colonisation Indigenous health and public health; state and national frameworks (e.g. Queensland health equity frameworks for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples)
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Organisations (ATICCHS); Queensland original and Islander Health Council (QAIHC); Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH); Indigenous-led models of care: origins, principles, governance, case studies.
• Policy frameworks and strategies: Closing the Gap, state/territory strategies, key legislation and national agreements

Program design, data collection, resourcing and partnerships

• Program design and evaluation: Indigenous health promotion, Compare mainstream and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Organisations; prevention and community development, including strengths-based and decolonising approaches including positionality mapping, critical incident analysis, self-location. community perspectives dialogic/yarning assessments, collective learning approaches
• Indigenous research methodologies (e.g., yarning, decolonising methods) and implications for public health knowledge production; 
• Research, ethics and evidence: Indigenous research ethics guidelines (NHMRC IREC ethics)
• Resource allocation: equity and priority setting in Indigenous health programs
• Working in partnership: co-design, shared decision-making, supporting culturally safe and respectful engagement with First Nations communities. Role of Elders 

Critical reflexivity and professional identity

• Engaging with colonisation, racism, power, privilege, and identity to increase cultural capability
• Learner and/or practitioner interrogation of: their positionality (culture, privilege, identity, power); how their worldview shapes interpretation and practice; the structural forces of colonisation, racism, power relations, and systems; how professional roles and institutions reinforce inequity

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit will apply Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies - Indigenous Ways of Being, Knowing and Doing - to strengthen its authenticity and legitimacy. Indigenous Cultural Advice has been sought and involved in the co-design of the unit. Critical reflexivity and culturally safe engagement will be practiced through Indigenous pedagogies such as yarning, Elder‑ or community‑led teaching, Country‑based learning, or other Indigenous learning modalities, relational learning and co-design and discussion of the management of discomfort and allyship. Where appropriate lectures, tutorials, and small group discussions on specialised topics will be conducted and use made of videos and case studies.