The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and the National Prescribing Service (NPS) have recently embarked on a project designed to help Aboriginal Health Workers improve their knowledge and skills about medicines.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders live with chronic conditions, such as asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure. However, on average, they use fewer medicines than other Australians, because they face many difficulties obtaining and using medicines, including:

• cost of medicines
• poor access to medicines and information about medicines
• lack of support when taking medicines
• inappropriate labels. 

Tackling quality use of medicines issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities should lead to significant improvements in their health. However, such issues must be considered in the context of the many other problems facing the communities, including:

• impact of colonisation and resulting poverty and loss of culture
• place of western medicines relative to traditional medicines
• lack of culturally relevant health care services
• poor cultural awareness by some mainstrean health care professionals and services.

Aboriginal Health Workers

One of the ways Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have dealt with the chronic shortages of medical and nursing staff is by training local people to provide health services in their communities.

The roles of these Aboriginal Health Workers vary but may include assessing, treating and following up people with common conditions, prescribing and dispensing medicines, giving injections and immunisations, stitching up wounds, and providing health and lifestyle advice. These roles make Aboriginal Health Workers ideally placed to educate their communities about medicines.

The project team 

NACCHO Project

In September 2005, NACCHO hosted a two-day training workshop in Broome for Aboriginal Health Workers from the Kimberley, Melbourne and Port Lincoln. The trainers identified the quality use of medicines issues in their communities, reviewed the available educational resources, and discussed the best ways to help their communities learn about and use medicines safely and wisely.

The trainers will use the decisions of the Broome workshop and the results of discussions in their local communities about the key issues to develop training modules that can be used to train other Aboriginal Health Workers.

The modules will cover four main topics: quality use of medicines, asthma, diabetes and hypertension. Ten draft modules have been prepared: one general quality use of medicines module, and three specific modules for each disease condition.

The training of the trainers will begin in the first half of 2006 after the modules have been finalised. Soon afterwards, the trainers will begin passing on their quality use of medicines knowledge and skills to fellow Aboriginal Health Workers.