Improving health promotion using quality improvement techniques in Australian Indigenous primary health care

Percival, Nikki, O'Donoghue, Lynette, Lin, Vivian, Tsey, Komla, and Bailie, Ross Stewart (2016) Improving health promotion using quality improvement techniques in Australian Indigenous primary health care. Frontiers in Public Health, 4. 53. pp. 1-9.

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Abstract

Although some areas of clinical health care are becoming adept at implementing continuous quality improvement (CQI) projects, there has been limited experimentation of CQI in health promotion. In this study, we examined the impact of a CQI intervention on health promotion in four Australian Indigenous primary health care centers. Our study objectives were to (a) describe the scope and quality of health promotion activities, (b) describe the status of health center system support for health promotion activities, and (c) introduce a CQI intervention and examine the impact on health promotion activities and health centers systems over 2 years. Baseline assessments showed suboptimal health center systems support for health promotion and significant evidence-practice gaps. After two annual CQI cycles, there were improvements in staff understanding of health promotion and systems for planning and documenting health promotion activities had been introduced. Actions to improve best practice health promotion, such as community engagement and intersectoral partnerships, were inhibited by the way health center systems were organized, predominately to support clinical and curative services. These findings suggest that CQI can improve the delivery of evidence-based health promotion by engaging front line health practitioners in decision-making processes about the design/redesign of health center systems to support the delivery of best practice health promotion. However, further and sustained improvements in health promotion will require broader engagement of management, senior staff, and members of the local community to address organizational and policy level barriers.

Item ID: 43517
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2296-2565
Keywords: health promotion, quality improvement, Indigenous, primary health care, evidence-based program, feasibility, participatory action research
Additional Information:

© 2016 Percival, O'Donoghue, Lin, Tsey and Bailie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Funders: Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health (CRCAH), National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC)
Projects and Grants: NHMRC Project Grant #490302, NHMRC Postgraduate Training Scholarship for Indigenous Australian Health Research #490337, NHMRC Research Fellowship #283303
Date Deposited: 28 Jul 2016 05:22
FoR Codes: 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4504 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing > 450409 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9203 Indigenous Health > 920303 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health - Health System Performance (incl. Effectiveness of Interventions) @ 100%
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