Moving Forward Together in Aboriginal Women's Health: - Theses ...

Moving Forward TogetherJanet Kellyprofessionals and Aboriginal community women to know what levels ofknowledge sharing and collaboration were likely in each health program andpolicy.South Australian response to health for allMany comprehensive primary health care initiatives expanded in SouthAustralia in the late 1980s. Adelaide hosted the second International HealthPromotion Conference with emphasis on healthy public policy, communityparticipation and collaboration between all sectors of government. The SouthAustralian Government launched a Social Health Strategy in 1988 (SouthAustralian Health Commission 1988), and a Primary Health Policy in 1989(South Australian Health Commission 1989). Healthy Cities, drug and alcohol,nutrition, child and adolescent health and mental health services were alsodeveloped.However, difficulties in promoting and sustaining public health and healthpromotion activities at a political and economic level were experienced.Following the collapse of the State Bank in 1992 and the change from a Laborto Liberal State Government, long term strategies addressing poverty,education, housing, nutrition and income maintenance became increasinglydifficult to defend politically at local and state levels (Baum 2008). Healthminister John Cornwell reflected on the attempts to implement the new publichealth approach and comprehensive primary health care by saying:The magic bullet approach… is much simpler than a necessarily complexapproach based on the more accurate notion that health is theconsequence of many and varied public policies interacting with theindividual… At a political level the public policy approach lacks supportbecause it produces results in the long term and is less visible than theshort-term crisis intervention of heroic medicine. Coronary bypasssurgery and level three intensive care for very low birthweight babies arenewsworthy. Addressing questions of poverty, education, housing,nutrition and income maintenance to overcome the problem of very lowbirthweight babies is not possible in a 60 second television news segment.Nor will it boost ratings or sell newspapers. It is a longer term and less72