Determining the cultural safety of chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: a scoping review
Woodall, Hannah, Larkins, Sarah, Pinidiyapathirage, Janani, Ward, Raelene, and Evans, Rebecca (2025) Determining the cultural safety of chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: a scoping review. Frontiers in Public Health, 13. 1462410.
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Abstract
Objectives: To assess how the cultural safety of primary care-based chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is determined. Methods: Scoping review of peer-reviewed evaluations of chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, in which cultural safety is an outcome. Searches included Scopus, Informit, OVID Medline, Emcare and CINAHL including all articles published until September 2023. Results: Searches identified 2,225 articles. 1,854 articles underwent title and abstract screening, with 97 progressing to full text review. Twenty articles met the inclusion criteria. 75% (n = 15) of articles determined cultural safety based solely on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ perspectives, with community acceptance as the most common means of determining cultural safety. In the analysed studies, elements contributing to cultural safety included practitioner behaviour (n = 15), knowledge (n = 6), skills (n = 1) and attitudes (n = 4), partnership with community (n = 4) and culturally safe services (n = 5), and graphics and artwork (n = 6). The inconsistent terminology and lack of definitions made comparison of studies challenging. Conclusion: This review underscores the importance of adopting the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) definition of cultural safety to standardise terminology and explore the many elements of cultural safety. It is recommended that cultural safety is defined by the community targeted by the intervention. Identification of elements of cultural safety will guide future interventions and reduce reliance on community acceptance as an indirect measure of cultural safety. If chronic diseases interventions are to effectively impact health equity, it is vital to understand cultural safety within these settings.
| Item ID: | 88576 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2296-2565 |
| Keywords: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, chronic disease, cultural safety, intervention, scoping review |
| Copyright Information: | © 2025 Woodall, Larkins, Pinidiyapathirage, Ward and Evans. 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) and the copyright owner(s) 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. |
| Date Deposited: | 12 May 2026 07:24 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420602 Health equity @ 50% 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4504 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing > 450407 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 21 INDIGENOUS > 2103 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health > 210302 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health status and outcomes @ 100% |
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