The Indigenous Eye Health
Newsletter May 2015

Melbourne School ofTHE UNIVERSITY OFMELBOURNE

Population& GlobalHealthWestern Sydney Roadmap updatePartners on the Road in Victoria

The Roadmap team has been working in Western
Sydney since early 2014, following invitation fromthe Aboriginal Health Services subcommittee of theWestern Sydney Local Health District and with support
from Aboriginal Medical Service Western Sydney(AMSWS) and Western Sydney Medicare Local.
A regional stakeholder group has been convened
by AMSWS and is chaired by A/Prof Dea DelaneyThiele who also leads the population health unit ofAMSWS. There is high level engagement in the work,
the Western Sydney Eye Health Project, from thehealth district, hospital eye departments, Medicare
Local and Aboriginal Health Service. AMSWS is 40
km west of the Sydney CBD and the region has asignificant Indigenous population estimated at over
13,000 people and is considered the largest urban
population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people in Australia. Western Sydney is also noted tohave a large cataract surgery rate disparity between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

In Victoria, Roadmap implementation is also beingenhanced through one state-wide and four regional
Indigenous eye health project workers employedthrough Victorian state government Aboriginal
health funds (Koolin Balit). The Indigenous eye
health project officers are engaging local Aboriginalcommunity controlled health services, optometry,
ophthalmology, and hospital services in themapping of service gaps, determination of needs
and developing local strategies to close the gap forvision.
These workers and their geographic areas are:•••••Milpa the Trachoma Goannafeatures on two of eight
Healthy Living Murals atErnabella Anangu SchoolSusan Forrester is the Victorian state-wide
Indigenous eye health project officer based at
VACCHO in Melbourne.
Roman Zwolak is the Grampians Eye Health
Project officer, auspiced from Budja Budja
community in Halls Gap, and works across theGrampians region.
Levi Lovett is the Great South Coast Regional
Eye Health Project officer in the Barwon SouthWest region and is based at the Winda-Mara
Aboriginal Corporation in Heywood.
Dallas Widdicombe has commenced as theRegional Eye Health Project officer for theLodden Mallee region and is based at theBendigo and District Aboriginal Co-operative(BDAC).
Fiona O’Leary recently commenced as theProject Officer, Koolin Balit North and West
Metropolitan Region (NWMR) Eye Project and isbased at the Australian College of Optometry inCarlton.

Budget story

Sonia Lewis, Lara Wells
and Priscilla Adamson
painting the Healthy Living
MuralsThe Federal Budget handed down on May 12th
contained moderate net increase in spending for
health on the current year and foreshadowed,
amongst other things, delivery of a more efficient
health system. Although eye health and vision carereceived a few mentions in the budget papers,
no additional funding was announced to support
implementation of the Roadmap to Close the Gapfor Vision. Indigenous Eye Health worked with Vision2020 Australia and partners to submit a sector
budget proposal and there are ongoing discussions
with the Department of Health and Minister Fiona
Nash around this.

Trachoma Lightning Carnival

Diabetes Health Promotion

Melbourne Football Club Trachoma Ambassadors
past and present featured in the hugely popular Easter
Lightning Football Carnival in Alice Springs in April.
Thirty teams were involved in this very important
community inclusion event when everyone fromremote communities come to support their footyteam and enjoy the carnival.
Former Trachoma Ambassador Dom Barry wasplaying while current players Jay Kennedy-Harris,Mark Jamar, Neville Jetta and Jeff Garlett were onICTV and CAAMA radio.
The current players were passing on tips for getting
the goals and marks by having clean faces andstrong eyes. The radio CSAs were broadcast in 5 local
languages and English.

The IEH health promotion roundtable held at
Lowitja Institute in December 2014 has provided
the basis of our work around diabetes and eye carehealth promotion. Understanding the motivation,ability and triggers has helped to identify a numberof opportunities and appropriate communication
channels to share eye messages effectively.

Hon Jeff Kennett AC leading discussions at the IEH Health
Promotion roundtable

IEH has commenced the development process
in three regions across Australia including theGrampians Victoria; Looma community in Kimberley
WA; and Western Sydney NSW.
Melbourne Football Club Trachoma Ambassadors Jeff Garlett,Jay Kennedy-Harris, Neville Jetta and Mark Jamar in therecording studio, and below filming the new TV Ad.

MSAC retinal photography update
The MSAC application for retinal photography witha non-mydriatic retinal camera (RP-NMRC) wasapproved by MSAC in November 2014 and there havebeen ongoing discussions around some of the finer
details of the MBS Descriptor with the Departmentof Health. There was a follow up meeting in February
to discuss the details and further correspondence
has since clarified some points. A revised descriptor
is to be considered by the MSAC Executive in Juneand hopefully for listing by November. They have notspecified which year yet!

A week of focused workshops with community
members and health workers is taking place in eachof the regions to refine appropriate eye messages(from previous work conducted within IEH) andbuild slogans, music, art work and shared personal
stories that will be used for eye health promotional
material in the region that will also feed in to thedevelopment of broader national health promotion
resources.
A health promotion workshop will be held in June2015 to celebrate and refine the outputs from twoof the three regions with direct input from healthworkers, diabetes and other eye health professionals
and organisations to ensure the provision ofappropriate and acceptable health promotion for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
This strong community driven process plays asignificant role in engaging and empoweringcommunity members and bridging the gap between
clinical intervention and improvements in eyehealth.

Trachoma Health Promotion
Wesfarmers through Coles and Bunnings havedonated good hygiene bags and large safety mirrors
to promote clean faces and hygiene practices. These
are important hygiene incentives and practicalsupport for schools in trachoma endemic regionsof SA, WA and NT. The hygiene bags and mirrors
will compliment the existing curriculum-based
trachoma teacher resources.

Dr Tom Calma AO and Professor Hugh Taylor AC working
together tackling Indigenous smoking to stop tobacco
related eye disease.

What is the link between binoculars, aprince and Aboriginal eye sight?
Fiona Lange, Kelly Dyer, Jamie Colthart & Jessie Motlik at
the Coles Warehouse in Adelaide preparing stock for 7,000
Hygiene Bags

Regional implementation toolkit
A series of tools to support regional implementationof the Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision has
been developed and is freely available on ourwebsite. Together these tools form the ‘Regional
Implementation Toolkit’. An additional section
provides a number of online resources withbackground and supplementary information.

On April 8th, the ABC ran a story with Hugh Taylor
titled ”Prince Harry ‘may need binoculars’ to match‘super sight’ of Indigenous NORFORCE soldiers”. The
ABC interviewed Hugh Taylor who explained thatsome Aboriginal adults can have vision that is fourtimes sharper or finer than non-Indigenous people.
As the article explains astronomers were looking atrecords from the 1840s into Aboriginal descriptionsof constellations of stars. It took a pair of binoculars
for them to see what Aboriginal people could seejust with the naked eye.

Photo: John Stillwell/AP (www.telegraph.co.uk) April 2, 2015

http://iehu.unimelb.edu.au/roadmap

Prince Harry was visiting Australia and training with
the Indigenous NORFORCE unit in the Northern
Territory and the link was made that he may needbinoculars to see as well as some of the NORFORCE
soldiers.
Read the article here:
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-08/prince-harrymay-struggle-to-keep-up-with-aboriginal-supersight/6378066

Kimberley Regional Diabetes Eye Conference May 2015

Cataract blitzes don’t solve long term
problems
A recent Medical Journal of Australia paper (Med JAust 2015; 202 (8): 407-408) written by Hugh Taylor,Tim Henderson and Richard Le Mesurier highlighted
the short comings of cataract surgery blitzes. They areoften used to address waiting lists but on their own
they do not provide a long-term solution. Sustainableongoing services also need to be developed. Please
see the web address below to read the paper.

Welcome to new staff
We would like to welcome Kelly Jones and Liz Orr
who started in January. Dr Kelly Jones joins us fromthe University of Adelaide where she was working
in the Indigenous Oral Health Unit, part of theAustralian Research Centre for Population OralHealth. Kelly is leading our health promotion work.
Liz Orr is a social worker and community services
manager who has worked in a variety of areas
including Aboriginal health. Liz is working on
implementation of the Roadmap to Close the Gapfor Vision.
We also welcome back Andrea Boudville frommaternity leave. Andrea is back working with theRoadmap team.

Congratulations
Professor Hugh Taylor was elected as a Fellow of theAustralian Academy of Health and Medical Sciencesin Canberra on 25th March and awarded the Asia
Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology 2015 Jose Rizal
Medal for excellence in ophthalmology in theAsia-Pacific region in April.

www.mja.com.au/journal/2015/202/8/cataractsurgical-blitzes-australian-anachronism

Professor Hugh Taylor accepting the Jose Rizal Medal forexcellence in ophthalmology in April.

New Trachoma Resources
Three Ts for Trichaiasis (above) and the latest 5 step Hygiene
poster (right)
These and other resources can be downloaded here:

www.iehu.unimelb.edu.au/the_trachoma_story_kit/free_kit_resources

Indigenous Eye Health
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
The University of Melbourne
T: +61 3 8344 9320 W: iehu.unimelb.edu.au