This policy brief outlines the importance of cultural safety in addressing racism, the need for clarity and understanding about cultural safety and creating pathways for embedding cultural safety in health and human services through establishing national training standards and a linked accreditation process, combined with dedicated organisational action.

While cultural safety training is a critical strategy, it must be accompanied by other committed and long-term organisational cultural change strategies to achieve a sustained improvement in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health and human services experiences and outcomes. Strategies must be embedded into interlocking systems and measured to ensure accountability and quality.

Cultural safety focuses on creating environments where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples feel safe, valued and respected, free from racism and discrimination. Achieving cultural safety requires systemic changes in healthcare practices, policies and environments to address power imbalances and institutional racism.

The pervasive influence of racism in healthcare impacts on treatment experiences, outcomes and access to care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Racism in healthcare is associated with greater psychological distress, poor physical health and reduced life chances. These experiences contribute to health risk behaviours such as low healthcare-seeking, low adherence to medical advice, and alcohol and drug use, which further exacerbate poor health outcomes.

Addressing, preventing and eliminating racism is at the heart of cultural safety work, coupled with ensuring Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing are recognised, valued and enacted. This requires a multi-pronged approach that intervenes across all levels and forms of racism and elevates the cultural determinants of health.