Building Capacity towards Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People across Remote North Queensland

This paper discusses the building of capacity towards Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across remote north Queensland. It highlights the importance of community engagement, capacity building, and community empowerment in preventing the prevalence of STDs in the indigenous population. The paper also suggests strategies in order to promote health models and the approaches employed to address the prevention of the sexually transmitted diseases.

Running head: COMMUNITY HEALTH AND DISEASE PREVENTION
COMMUNITY HEALTH AND DISEASE PREVENTION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
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Introduction 180
The far north Queensland of Australia is mainly inhabited Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander population. This population has been suffering from various disadvantages in terms of
education, housing, employment and mainly health services. Their health outcomes have always
been quite poor with several occurrences of communicable diseases mainly the sexually
transferred diseases (Fagan et al., 2015). Occurrences of STD is seen to be particularly high in
the younger population of the Aboriginal community. A study has reported that two of the most
common sexual transferred infections were chlamydia and gonorrhoea showing 8,339 and 2,739
per 100,000, compared with 869 and 44.1 per 100,000, respectively (Crooks, 2010). STI is
involved in causing morbidity and leads to reproductive health outcomes that are negative like
pelvic inflammatory disease, incidences of tubal infertility, congenital infection along with
adverse pregnancy outcomes. The paper aims to discuss the building capacity towards Sexually
Transmitted Infection Prevention in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across remote
north Queensland. The paper illustrates the key strategies that can be employed in order to
address the health concerns prevalent in the Aboriginal community. Additionally the paper
discusses the approaches in order engage the community and ways to empower the community in
building of capacity for prevention. The paper also suggests strategies in order to promote health
models and the approaches employed to address the prevention of the sexually transmitted
diseases.

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Key Strategies to address health concern 240
One of the major strategies to address the health concern especially in terms of sexually
transmitted diseases (STD) in the youth population of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
is the implementation of the Youth Person Check strategy. The youth population of the
aboriginal community is asked to participate in the programs who are further enquired through
the use of questionnaires. Programs such as YPC are considered in such settings since the
conditions here can be met (Fagan, Cannon & Crouch, 2013).
Another strategy implemented was the Well Person’s Health Check. This program was
implemented which helped to identify the health problems having high prevalence in the
population of the Aboriginals (Miller et al., 2002). This program was successful in developing an
early detection that was sustainable in terms of strategy used for early detection especially for
this particular region.
Finally another strategy can be implemented for identification of health issues especially
at the practice level using the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health
(BEACH)/Supplementary Analysis of Nominated Data (SAND) study (Nattabi et al., 2017). This
study helps to examine the health issues impact on the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders
through the use of certain questions which are related to their ethnicity. This way improvements
can be obtained in the flow of information with respect to the sexually transmitted diseases and
other communicable diseases.
Community Engagement
Community engagement is essential for building of capacity for the prevention of the
Sexually transmitted diseases in the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders. Community

3COMMUNITY HEALTH AND DISEASE PREVENTION
engagement involves school-based programs which provides a holistic approach sexual health
and substance use. The education programs developed for the young population of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is required to respond to the social, cultural and
environmental determinant in context to the area where they live. There is a need of access to the
appropriate health care services, along with the community-based programs (Rusch et al., 2008).
Peer education is also seen as an essential part. It is seen that rates of teenage pregnancy is high
in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. This suggests that there is a need to
develop programs of education promoting healthy living along with responsible parenthood in
addition to avoidance of transmission of infections from the mother to the child. It also helps to
build capacity to make healthy relationship choices.
Capacity Building
Capacity building helps to strengthen the health services and along with building of
community expertise in order to respond to health needs of the population. It also takes
responsibility of the health outcomes. The idea of capacity building includes equipping the staff
in an effective manner who possess appropriate cultural knowledge along with clinical expertise.
It builds infrastructure of physical, human and intellectual nature that helps to foster leadership
in addition to governance and management of finances (Trickett & Pequegnat, 2005).
Capability building in terms of prevention of sexually transmitted diseases consists of a
two way action plan. The first action plan involves partnership and the second action plan
involves prevention. With the help of effective partnership the health care services of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander can be improved. Partnerships can be formed in the

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national, state and territory levels through several agreements with the representative bodies of
the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islander populations (Ward & Graham, 2011). Partnerships
form the fundamental in the context of the efforts in order to improve sexual health of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. Commitment should be present in the
partnerships with in consultation and through joint decision make a response to HIV/AIDS, STIs
and BBV. The partnerships must involve cooperation in activity at all levels. In this area the
action might be influenced by the Framework Agreements and the Partnership Forums. These
exist within jurisdictions and is involved in supporting the effort and in resourcing the health of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community (Trickett & Pequegnat, 2005).
In terms of action area dealing with prevention, it highlights the need for focus on the
strategies of prevention in order to target the STD infections. The approach included the broader
aspects like disease screening; along with accession to the prevention tools and the hardware like
NSP; strategies of diagnosis and early detection which uses client recall and systems of
reminder; tracing of contact; and finally strategies of health promotion which enable the clients
and providers with help to prevent the transmission of infection. Additionally there are use of
education programs which are designed in order to raise awareness for the behaviour protection
for disease prevention. This also involves barriers of structural and bureaucratic nature to the
health care system.
Community Empowerment
Community empowerment can be achieved through the establishment of the various
community-based organizations. Some of these organizations include the National Aboriginal
Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO). This organisation is on of the peak
organizations which is involved in the addressing the national Aboriginal health that in turn

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represents the ACCHSs (Bradshaw et al., 2005). It plays a key role in the strategy
implementation in terms of addressing the sexually transmitted diseases and capacity building.
This organization works in partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
Framework Agreements and has a role in analysis and making plans at the jurisdiction level with
the aim of improving the sexual health of the population of Aboriginals.
Another such organisation is the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services. This
is a non-government organisation that plays a role in implementation of the strategies along with
the NIASHS (Brown, 2016). Their role is central in terms of provision of health care delivery to
the community. This care that is delivered by them helps to improve the sexual health of the
Aboriginal people. They are also involved in the treatment and diagnosis of the STD and other
such communicable diseases thus allowing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to
adapt to their changing needs of the their community.
Other such community organizations include the AFAO, which is another such non-
government organization that is involved representing the response of the Australians in terms of
HIV or AIDS. The activities of the organization includes analysis of policies and certain
formulations based on the HIV/AIDS issues along with promoting advocacy along with
participation on the HIV advisory bodies/ other activities involve programs of education
development (Crooks, 2010). It also promotes best practice in HIV prevention along with health
promotion of HIV especially for the Aboriginal people.
Core domains of Capacity Building
The core domains of the capacity building includes the community engagement along
with mobilization. Provision of community based access in a private manner to condoms to each

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community from one particular location is another domain. The next domain is the school based
reproduction and the sexuality health education programs. There should comprise of curriculum
that are appropriate to the age of the children, are led by teachers and the continuous in nature.
Another domain is the major communications of the sexual health strategies (Fagan et al., 2015).
Health promotion models and approaches
The sexual health promotion models or strategies that can be implemented in the
communities of the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders includes the Youth and the
relationship networks (YARN groups) (Laverack, 2007). These groups meet on a weekly basis in
four different locations in order to issues agendas related to the issues of the youth of their
community and to advice on the projects that could be developed. The next strategy involves the
engagement of the major influential residents to the community based organizations. This
includes the engagement of the officials of the local governments along with the media
commentators in addition to the officials of the influential sporting clubs and the religious
leaders. The next strategy is to develop condom infrastructure in locations which are
participating. It might also include social marketing strategies for condoms like the local brands
of condoms. For this lobbying is required from the local government and the healthcare service
agencies serving in the participating locations (Nattabi et al., 2017). Strategies can also be
developed for engaging the authorities of regional education along in order to provide a cross-
sectorial study that is feasible in establishing in mechanism to achieve the aim in an acceptable
manner. This might engage the communities of the individual schools in the issues of the sexual
heath in a partnership with units of the regional indigenous school support. There should be
provision for certain evidence based strategies as well which includes the events such as World
AIDS Day and the activities on the International condom day. Certain arts based strategies can

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also be implemented like the Indigenous Hip Hop or the Radio drama like Kasa Por Yarn.
Broadcasting of these education-based entertainments broadcasts across the region of the remote
north Queensland might help (Miller et al., 2002).
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that in order to promote capacity building
for prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infection in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
across remote north Queensland, community engagement is mostly important. With the help of
various strategies which helps to promote the building of capacity, the community can be
empowered that will help to prevent the prevalence of STDs in the indigenous population.
Additionally with the establishment of the community based organizations, the community can
be empowered and more health care management strategies can be implemented with the aim of
prevention of the disease in the community.

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