• Lee Simpson, and others
• Aboriginal & Islander Health Worker Journal

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16 May 2011Improving access to cancer services for Aboriginal people in the Greater Southern Area Health Services of NSW (GSAHS) is a central focus of the Aboriginal Health and Cancer Service’s Working Together project. This twelve-month project, funded by the Cancer Institute NSW, begins to redress the current failure of local rural and regional health services to provide and develop accessible, culturally appropriate and secure health services for Aboriginal people with cancer. Central to the project are the development of collaborative relationships and partnerships between Aboriginal health workers and services and non-Aboriginal health professionals and cancer service networks that are internal and external to the Area Health Service. This article identifies the processes and strategies used to establish these collaborative relationships and begins with a brief description of the geographical and cultural context of the GSAHS region. In this paper, the term Aboriginal will be predominantly used as Aboriginal people are the traditional custodians of the land within GSAHS. We also acknowledge that there are a small number of Torres Strait Islander people living in the region.

Greater Southern Area Health Service covers approximately 166,000 sq km of rural New South Wales (NSW) and has a population of about 468,000 persons which includes approximately 13,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with Aboriginal people being the largest group. The region encompasses the traditional lands of the Nari Nari, Wemba Wemba, Baraba Baraba, Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal, Ngarigo, Gundjugurra and Yuin peoples. The region includes the towns of Albury, Deniliquin, Goulburn, Griffith, Hay, Hillston, Moruya, Narrandera, Queanbeyan, Young and Wagga Wagga, all of which have populations of Aboriginal people higher than the national average.

Authors: Lee Simpson, Isabel Reid, Joanna Zubrzycki and Victoria Jones.