Larter supported the Victorian Government to trial a free service that offered hands-on support to assist Aboriginal health project staff to share their local project evaluations. The service was available to Koolin Balit funded agencies, as well as any agency working in Aboriginal health in Victoria.

The six-month service was part of the Evaluation Capacity Building component of Koolin Balit which supported agencies to disseminate their local evaluation findings. The service provided one-on-one support and mentoring to help project staff identify appropriate communication avenues and then develop appropriate communication products (for example, presentations, abstracts, articles).

Why evaluate aboriginal health initiatives?

There are three main reasons why I believe that we need to be able to do evaluation work incredibly well. The first is around being accountable to government for the funds that they actually spend in our health services and to the communities who are responsible. Secondly what we want to do is build our workforce and build our knowledge in the way that we are able to work, and thirdly, is understanding the impact that we’re having in key areas that we’re working in so that we can better target interventions for future effort.

As a researcher I am very keen to keep on improving health service delivery, the quality of our services and also improve the ways in which our communities engage with our services through evaluation and quality improvement techniques.

Prof Kerry Arabena – Chair of Indigenous Health, Director of Indigenous Health Equity Unit, University of Melbourne

Watch this video for more information about the importance of evaluations.

Larter was excited to support Aboriginal health project staff to share the amazing work they are delivering by sharing the stories of their health programs through local evaluation findings.