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• Indigenous Chronic
  Disease Package
• Tackling Chronic Disease
  Risk Factors
  • National action to reduce Indigenous smoking rate
  • Helping Indigenous Australians to reduce their risk of chronic disease
  • Local Indigenous community campaigns to promote better health
• Improving Chronic Disease
  Management and Follow up
  • Subsidising PBS medicine co-payments
  • Higher utilisation costs for MBS and PBS
  • Supporting primary care providers to coordinate chronic disease management
  • Improving Indigenous participation in health care through chronic disease self management
  • Increasing specialist and allied health follow up care
  • Monitoring and evaluation
• Workforce Expansion,
  Training and Support
  • Workforce education and training
  • Expanding the outreach and service capacity of Indigenous health services
  • Engaging Medicare Locals to improve Indigenous Access to mainstream primary care
  • Attracting more people to work in Indigenous Health
  • Clinical practice and decision support

Closing the Gap - The Indigenous Chronic Disease Package in 2009-10 - Annual Progress Report on the Australian Government’s contribution to the National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap in Indigenous Health Outcomes - November 2010

Working in Partnership

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For the purpose of this report, an Indigenous health service is a practice, Aboriginal community controlled health service, or a clinic providing primary care services to a predominantly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

The Australian Government is committed to working in partnership with both the mainstream and Indigenous health sectors to develop and implement this Package, taking feedback on board where possible to reflect the best available advice.

The National Indigenous Health Equality Council brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous health experts from across the country to provide advice to the Ministers for Health and Ageing and Indigenous Health on the implementation of, and progress towards, the Australian Government’s commitments to closing the gap in health inequality. This includes providing overarching policy advice for the Package.

The Australian Government has worked with Indigenous Health Partnership Forums in each state and territory to ensure that the Package targets regional priorities and does not overlap or duplicate existing service delivery. The forums provide advice on implementing the Package and include representatives from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, state and territory governments and the Aboriginalcommunity controlled health sector. Representation from the Divisions of General Practice Network has also been included in considering implementation of the Package. In 2009-10, some of the key achievements of the forums include:

• Agreement on priority areas for the first new Indigenous health workforce positions;
• Early identification of issues and risks, and strategies or solutions to manage these; and
• Coordination of complementary Commonwealth and state and territory activities to avoid duplication.

In some jurisdictions, forum subgroups have been established to provide a more specific focus on implementation issues and a greater level of expert advice on individual elements of the Package. These sub-groups have been able to bring ‘on the ground’ and clinical expertise into the decision-making process to better inform the rollout of measures under the Package. Forums and their sub-groups have also helped strengthen the relationships between the mainstream and community controlled sectors. This has not only benefited implementation of this Package, but will also serve to improve the quality and coordination of all health care provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

A number of national-level technical reference groups were also established to ensure the implementation of each measure is informed by the latest expert advice. These groups have provided valuable feedback which has shaped and guided the development of new initiatives.

The Department of Health and Ageing has also consulted directly with local stakeholder organisations on implementing the Package. In Queensland, the forum agreed to make south-east Queensland a key priority, which led to the Department consulting with the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health. By working with a locallybased organisation, the Department was able to identify the best areas in the region to implement new initiatives, which will improve service delivery for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of south-east Queensland.

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