Sharing Power for Advocating for Reform Collectively ‘SPARC’

About the Research Project

The SPARC research project emerged in response to Australia’s Closing the Gap (CtG) targets, which address the social, cultural, and environmental factors impacting First Nations’ health. Despite progress in some areas, Australia is still failing to meet most CtG targets, with the gap in recurrent health costs estimated at $4.4 billion annually. Australian governments and the First Nations Coalition of Peaks have agreed on four Priority Reform Areas to enhance progress. The four priority CtG reform areas are:

• Formal partnerships and shared decision making
• Building the community-controlled sector
• Transforming government organisations
• Shared access to data and information at a regional level.

However, there is limited research on how First Nations leadership coalitions can implement these reforms at the community level. This project partners with four community leadership coalitions in Queensland to determine how these reforms can be co-designed, implemented and evaluated at community level using a collective impact framework.

The aim of this research project is to identify priorities and determine what approaches have the capacity to create shifts in the four reform areas for each community, and to co-design, implement, and evaluate a collective impact approach, working together with and across communities to drive meaningful change. 

Impact

This interdisciplinary research will demonstrate how health policy and intra- and inter-community practice can be transformed. New knowledge will be translated into a blueprint to inform further community change processes and impacts on the reform areas.

Partners

• Deadly Indigenous Youth Doing Good (DIYDG)
• Gunawuna Jungai Ltd (Doomadgee)
• Yarrabah Leaders Forum
• Woorabinda Leadership Group
• Queensland Health Reform Office
• Department of Women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships and Multiculturalism