Aboriginal communities, leaders and health researchers came together last week at a special event on Bidjigal Country (Brighton-le-Sands, Sydney) to celebrate the many achievements of SEARCH, Australia’s largest ongoing study of the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal children and their families in urban areas.
Owned and led by Aboriginal people, SEARCH (Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health) has been following over 1,600 Aboriginal children and their families since 2008, generating a wealth of evidence used by communities to drive real improvements in health services.
Key themes to emerge from the event were the incredibly positive impact SEARCH has had on communities and individuals; the importance of a holistic view of health to improve outcomes; and the model of Aboriginal-led research that SEARCH represents.
Professor Sandra Eades, a Noongar woman from Western Australia and a founding investigator with SEARCH, launched the event’s morning of talks and panel discussions, speaking about the early days of SEARCH. She commented on the contribution SEARCH has made by shifting the power to Aboriginal people and communities taking control and leadership of research.
Like most speakers, she also spoke about the personal impact the Study has had on her: just as SEARCH represented a new beginning in Aboriginal research, it was also a part of her own beginning as one of Australia’ leading Aboriginal health researchers.
Housing
Darryl Wright AM, CEO of SEARCH partner Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation in South Western Sydney and a Dunghutti man, spoke passionately about the problem of inadequate housing for Aboriginal people and the impact on their health, with problems including mould, damp, leaking roofs and vermin infestations.
“We’re trying to make our people well and healthy, but then they’re going back to unhealthy houses that are doing them no favours,” he commented.
Armed with SEARCH data on housing conditions for Aboriginal people in South Western Sydney, the inspirational response to this challenge by Darryl and the Tharawal Board was to set up the Tharawal Housing Aboriginal Corporation, which has provided 106 new houses for the local Aboriginal community to date.
Karen Beetson, Deputy Director of Aboriginal Health at South Western Sydney LHD and a Manadandanji woman from Roma in Queensland, said SEARCH gave Aboriginal communities a voice and demystified the concept of research for Aboriginal people, allowing them to trust in it.
“Previously, there was nothing in research about resilience, it was about what was wrong with you. But SEARCH helped me understand who I was and what our community needed. With SEARCH, we were part of the design and part of the analysis. We had control over what was captured, why it was captured and where that information was going to be shared.”
Ear health
LaToya Terry, a Wiradjuri woman from the Riverina Medical and Dental Aboriginal Corporation – another SEARCH partner – spoke about the dramatic impact SEARCH had on ear health in her Aboriginal community. She shared how SEARCH affected her family personally, when her own daughter was diagnosed with mild hearing loss.
“Before SEARCH, we knew there was a problem with ear health in our kids. But without evidence, it was hard to get any funding or action from the government. We were able to get the evidence and funding to get our children to see an ENT specialist and were able to set up a hearing room and regular speech assessments.”
LaToya also spoke about the importance of SEARCH in addressing food insecurity issues in Aboriginal communities, and how the Study brought together local organisations – including RivMed and Tharawal – to develop ways to improve food security.
“Through these meetings, a partnership was formed that allowed us to do pickups of 20 to 30 meals which we would deliver to elders, families and singles needing assistance with accessing nutritional meals. It was so rewarding to see how happy the community was when we doing the food drop offs and they would tell us how beautiful the meals were.”
Associate Professor Kelvin Kong, an ENT surgeon and Worimi man, commented on the inherent racism in our health system that leads to poorer outcomes in Aboriginal people.
“What’s wrong with our health system that as an Aboriginal person you get not second grade but tenth grade treatment? When I attend international meetings with friends across the world, they ask us about Aboriginal people because ear disease in Aboriginal people is so bad. In our research, we are providing evidence to show how bad it is – the real challenge now is how do we change that?”
Another speaker, Dylan Croall, a young health researcher and Yamaji man, talked movingly about the effect SEARCH had on his own life.
“I was actually a SEARCH kid, I was in the program. I had really bad ears, and if SEARCH hadn’t come to my community at that time, I would have lost my hearing completely.”
Dylan was one of three young researchers at the event who spoke about how SEARCH built capacity in them as researchers, motivated them to go to university and later undertake graduate studies.
Professor Emily Banks AM of the ANU College of Health and Medicine said she considered her involvement with SEARCH as an investigator as “the deepest honour of my career”. She said SEARCH has world-leading ways of working with highly innovative research methods.
“At the heart of SEARCH is control and community governance. There’s accountability and there’s the fact that research has to consider the community. It’s about listening faithfully to everybody’s story and making sure that the story that is heard is the right story.”
SEARCH is a co-creative partnership between the Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council, NSW Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services and the Sax Institute. Find out more about SEARCH here.
The Sax Institute acknowledges the Gadigal People of the Eora nation as the first peoples and traditional owners of the land on which our office is located. We pay our respects to Aboriginal Elders past, present and emerging. We recognise the strong cultural connections of all First Peoples to their land and water across Australia.
PUBLICATION DATE
02 March 2023
