Improving Care & Outcomes for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Children & Young People, their families & communities

The annual Closing the Gap report prepared for the Australian Government by the Lowitja Institute, highlights the resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, communities and organisations across Australia in the face of ongoing inequities in access to and outcomes from healthcare services.

It also confirms that babies born to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander parent have a higher risk than non-indigenous babies of being born below a healthy birthweight (<2,500 grams, usually from being born early).  Aboriginal infants are also at higher risk of stillbirth or perinatal death according to the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework. 

WHA supports member services to share expertise & innovations in their approaches to improving care and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, their families and communities.  We host a dedicated network of indigenous and non-indigenous clinicians and service leaders sharing strategies for co-designing and co-delivering culturally safe and effective healthcare services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, their families and communities.   

Now we are embarking on designing benchmarking dashboards to help better identify those services that are providing exemplary care, and to help them showcase their achievements and approach with other women’s healthcare services across Australia.   

WHA is also committed to partnering with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and communities to support efforts to reduce rates of early birth as part of the national Breakthrough Collaborative on Early Birth Prevention.