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Australian Health Review Australian Health Review Society
Journal of the Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

An opportunity to transform Australia’s neo-colonial health system

Alicia E. Veasey https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5062-651X A B *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Zenadh Kes.

B Queensland Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Clinical Network, Clinical Excellence Queensland, Queensland Health, Queensland, Australia.

* Correspondence to: alicia.veasey@outlook.com

Australian Health Review 48(2) 116-118 https://doi.org/10.1071/AH24028
Submitted: 2 February 2024  Accepted: 11 February 2024  Published: 7 March 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of AHHA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

The ‘modern’ value-based healthcare (VBHC) movement provides an opportunity to not only reform health care towards a more equitable, community-centred system, but to also acknowledge, honour and learn from global Indigenous knowledge, systems, and ways of valuing knowing, being and doing. For Australia as a settler-colonial state, efforts to implement VBHC here are doomed to fail until the continued legacy of settler-colonial violence and systemic racism pervading Australia’s healthcare system is acknowledged, addressed and ameliorated.

Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, First Nations health, governance, health services, health systems, Indigenous health, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous systems, value-based health care.

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