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

Moving Forward TogetherJanet Kellydramatic intervention. It also implies on equity of important healthproducinggoods and services which we have not yet achieved [Cornwellquoted in (Raftery 1995, p. 35)]This highlights the practicalities and realities of trying to implement primaryhealth care models into capitalist societies and existing health systems wheremany people value individualistic care and biomedicine over broaderpopulation health and prevention strategies.The Ottawa Charter –combining selective and comprehensivePHCSimilar issues were being grappled with at an international level, and drove thedevelopment of the next World Health Organisation health policy document.The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (World Health Organisation 1986)reflected a revised vision of health promotion and public health thatincorporated both selective and comprehensive approaches to primary healthcare (Talbot & Verrinder 2005). Behavioural and lifestyle approaches weredescribed as personal skills for (individual) health that existed within widerprerequisites such as peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem,sustainable resources, social justice and equity(Baum 2008; WorldHealth Organisation 1986). The Ottawa Charter encouraged the health sector towork beyond the biomedical model dependent on technical knowledge, towardpractical and emancipatory knowledge.Australian health care in the 1990s however, responded more to post-liberaland economic rationalist trend than to the vision of the Ottawa Charter. Healthcare policies moved away from multidisciplinary population based primaryhealth care (embedded in knowledge sharing and collaboration) towardindividualistic care, privatisation, user- pays systems and personalresponsibility. Considerable funds were spent on reforming the GeneralPractice (GP) sector and providing financial incentives to assist doctors tobecome more involved in primary health care activities and health promotion(Baum 2008). Within South Australia, community health services experiencedfunding cutbacks and were encouraged to focus on selective primary healthcare services focusing on chronic disease care and prevention rather thanadvocacy and community development activities. Whereas there were 1373