Building an Aboriginal health workforce in the Pilbara
‘We are being swallowed up by mining.’ That is what people in the education and health sectors are telling CUCRH’s Associate Lecturer Sylvia Lockyer. Sylvia has been consulting with Aboriginal community leaders, health, education and training, and industry representatives about practical strategies to attract Aboriginal people into health-related courses and to support them in their studies and early work experiences.
This project is funded by the Commonwealth’s Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. Sylvia is an Aboriginal woman from Port Hedland. She worked as an EN, TAFE lecturer, and recently completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Curtin. An action plan will be finalised in early 2007 but the feedback already suggests that a wider range of VET courses in health care and environmental health may be part of the solution. Individual mentoring of students and support to workplaces in the health sector that take students and trainees will also be important. Given the positive responses from all of the key organisations who are part of the advisory group, CUCRH will have lots of help from all of the stakeholders.
