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Indigenous community-controlled health care organizations provide timely, sustained, and culturally safe care. However, their expertise is often excluded from health professional education. This limits the transfer of knowledges and protocols to future practitioners—those positioned to shape health care systems and practices that could achieve the health rights of Indigenous people and reduce health and social inequities. In Australia, despite national government commitments to transforming curricula, services, and systems related to Indigenous health, health care training organizations such as universities generally have low numbers of Indigenous staff and few strategies to engage Indigenous experts. The authors of this paper are part of the Bunya Project, an Indigenous-led participatory action research effort designed to support non-Indigenous university staff and curriculum development through partnerships with Indigenous community-controlled organizations. We conducted 24 interviews with Indigenous individuals to ascertain recommendations for health care curricula. Three themes emerged: (1) role-modeling and leadership of Indigenous-controlled health organizations; (2) specific learnings for health professionals; and (3) achieving human rights in practice. Interviews also highlighted the need for health professionals’ extension beyond clinical caregiving, and staff and students’ development of knowledge, skills, and actions regarding client self-determination in order to promote clients’ rights across all aspects of their health care. Critical self-reflection by health professionals is a foundational individual-level skill necessary for cultural safety.

Indigenous peoples live across all continents, representing approximately 90 nations and cultures and 476 million people. There have long been clear statements about the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determine services, policies, and resource allocations that affect our lives, particularly via the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. An area for urgent improvement is curricula that train the predominantly non-Indigenous health workforce about their responsibilities and that offer practical strategies to use when engaging with Indigenous peoples and issues. The Bunya Project is designed to advance Indigenous community-led teaching and evaluation of the embeddedness of strategies to achieve an Indigenous Graduate Attribute in Australia. The project centers the relationships with Aboriginal community services to lead education design relating to Indigenous peoples. The project aims to articulate community recommendations for university education in allied health in the usable format of digital stories to create culturally informed andragogy, curriculum, and assessment measures for use in teaching. It also aims to understand the impact of this work on student attitudes and knowledge about Indigenous peoples' allied health needs. Multilayered project governance was established, along with a 2-stage process using mixed methods participatory action research and critical reflection, using the reflective cycle by Gibbs. The first stage, preparing the soil, used community engagement, drew on lived experience, encouraged critical self-reflection, embodied reciprocity, and demanded working collectively. The second stage, planting the seed, requires more critical self-reflection, the development of community data through interviews and focus group discussions, the development of resources with an academic working group and community participants, the implementation of those resources with student feedback, the analysis of the feedback from students and community members, and reflection. The protocol for the first stage, preparing the soil, is complete. The results of the first stage are the relationships built and the trust earned and gained, and it has resulted in the development of the planting the seed protocol. As of February 2023, we have recruited 24 participants. We will analyze data shortly and expect to publish the results in 2024. The readiness of non-Indigenous staff to engage with Indigenous communities has not been ascertained by Universities Australia, nor can it be assured. Staff preparation and skills to support the curriculum, create a safe learning environment, and develop teaching and learning strategies to guide academics to recognize that how students learn is as important as the content students learn. This learning has broad implications and benefits for staff and students within their professional practice and for lifelong learning. DERR1-10.2196/39864.

While professional education in medicine and nursing in Australia has been implementing strategies to increase accessibility for Indigenous Australians, allied health professions remain underdeveloped in this area. Failure to improve the engagement of allied health professions with Indigenous Australians, and failure to increase the numbers of Indigenous staff and students risks perpetuating health inequities, intergenerational disadvantage, and threatens the integrity of professions who have publically committed to achieving cultural safety and health equity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Knowing this, leaders in the allied health professions are asking “What needs to change?” This paper presents a critical reflection on experiences of a university-based Indigenous Health Unit leading the embedding of Indigenous perspectives in allied health curriculum, informed by Indigenous community connections, literature reviews, and research in the context of an emerging community of practice on Indigenous health education. Key themes from reflections are presented in this paper, identifying barriers as well as enablers for change, which include Indigenous community relationship building, education of staff and students, and collaborative research and teaching on Indigenous Peoples’ allied health needs and models of care. These enablers are inherently anti-racism strategies that redress negative stereotypes perpetuated about Indigenous Australians and encourage the promotion of valuable Indigenous knowledges, principles, and practices as strategies that may also help meet the health needs of the general community.

The Bunya Project thesis explores the integration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' perspectives into healthcare education, aiming to bridge the gap between policy rhetoric and actionable strategies. Through collaborating with Indigenous healthcare providers, the Bunya Project seeks to embed Indigenous leadership and perspectives into healthcare curricula to enhance staff and student awareness of self, and the intersectionality of Indigenous experiences and health outcomes, to promote health equity.It utilises participatory action research grounded in Indigenous epistemologies, the project celebrates Indigenous expertise and advocates for community-led teaching and learning. The thesis unfolds through literature reviews, methodological outlines, findings from qualitative and quantitative data, and discussions on the potential impact and future directions. It emphasises the importance of Indigenous leadership, cultural safety, and inclusive education to improve healthcare outcomes and address systemic challenges in tertiary healthcare education, calling for ongoing research and community engagement to sustain progress.

To explore participants' experiences regarding the feasibility and acceptability of the Tidda Talk programme—an integrated physical activity and psychosocial initiative for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Qualitative evaluation of a single arm feasibility and acceptability trial. Yarning sessions were conducted with N = 19 programme participants approximately 1–2 weeks after programme completion. Reflexive thematic analysis, with an emphasis on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standpoint, was used to analyse verbatim transcripts or notes in place of audio recordings. Three themes were generated from the data: 1) Creating a space of healing, highlighting the importance of the culturally safe environment within the programme and associated social facilitators; 2) happier, healthier and learning life skills, detailing the new physical, social, emotional, physical and cultural skills and knowledge learned by participants throughout their programme experience; and 3) opportunities for improved practice, exploring recommendations for enhancing the programme for the next generation of Tiddas (i.e., programme participants). Findings support the overall feasibility and acceptability of the Tidda Talk programme. Critical factors in the programme's success were its holistic health approach, dual-component programme structure and flexible, place-based delivery. Overall, the study offers broader insight into how mental health and social and emotional wellbeing programmes and services may be optimised for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, allowing providers to understand what is truly needed and what will work.