Indigenous Health Equity and Cultural Safety in Research seminar

By Lenka Vodstrcil1 and Zhoujie Ding on behalf of CCS EDI committee, with Danielle Clarke on behalf of SPHPM ED&I committee.

On Tuesday 20 June, the Central Clinical School (CCS) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee joined forces with the School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine (SPHPM) Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the first time to deliver a sub-faculty seminar on Indigenous Health Equity and Cultural Safety in Research. We had a great turnout at the Alfred Hub and online via zoom, and afterwards shared food from Indigenous catering company, Bunji.

In what we hope becomes an annual event around Reconciliation Week, we heard two incredible talks from Dr Jessica O’Brien, ‘The paradigmatic clash: Indigenous vs biomedical research’ and Dr Julia McCartan, ‘Holding the mirror up: Examining power inequities for non-Indigenous people operating in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts’.

Dr O’Brien is an Aboriginal woman from central west New South Wales and imaging cardiologist working at Alfred Health. She is undertaking her PhD at CCS, investigating the role of cardiac MRI in diagnosing acute rheumatic fever and predicting who is at highest risk of developing rheumatic heart disease. Through her project, Dr O’Brien learnt about how Indigenous methodologies can be incorporated into biomedical research undertaken in institutional settings. Dr O’Brien shared the “pivots” she had to make to ensure that the research was culturally safe for Indigenous staff, participants and other stakeholders. She also detailed her experiences in undertaking a project in remote settings.

Our second speaker, Dr McCartan, joined us from the Monash Centre for Scholarship in Health Education. Dr McCartan spoke about how she applied critical methodology to examine non-Indigenous people's roles in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs in her PhD. She provided examples of how we can practise critical reflexivity, critical consciousness and be anti-racist in our roles as health professionals and students. Using the 'coin model' of privilege and critical allyship, Dr McCartan pointed out that in order to enact change for people who face inequity, we need to disrupt the barriers and social structures that at the same time afford us privilege and unearned advantage. 

A recording of the presentation will be available at the CCS EDI webpage.