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Mid West-led Clinical Yarning program receives State Government funding boost thanks to fellowship

Staff reporterGeraldton Guardian
Dr Ivan Lin, senior lecturer at the Geraldton-based WA Centre for Rural Health, and WA Country Health Service regional Aboriginal health consultant Rani Randall in Geraldton.
Camera IconDr Ivan Lin, senior lecturer at the Geraldton-based WA Centre for Rural Health, and WA Country Health Service regional Aboriginal health consultant Rani Randall in Geraldton. Credit: WA Centre for Rural Health

Clinical Yarning — a Mid West-led approach to build more trusting relationships between patients and clinicians — is set to keep spreading the word after receiving a funding injection.

The research program, a patient-centred healthcare framework that marries Aboriginal cultural communication preferences with biomedical understandings of health and disease, will receive a share of $2.3 million in funding after being awarded an Implementation Science Fellowship.

Dr Ivan Lin, senior lecturer at the Geraldton-based WA Centre for Rural Health (WACRH), which is part of the University of WA, was one of four recipients of the fellowship, which are conducted in partnership with the WA Country Health Service (WACHS).

“(Clinical Yarning is) designed to address long identified issues reported by Aboriginal people when accessing health services, by improving health providers communication with these communities,” Dr Lin said.

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“This new grant gives us the opportunity through partnership with WACHS to look at what it will take to implement the program in the Mid West region and the effect that will have on the quality of health care.

“We hope that health care practitioners who are trained in Clinical Yarning embrace it and find that it improves their practice and their enjoyment of working in the field.

“Partnering with WACHS in this grant will take this innovative framework out to regional and rural WA, starting in the Mid West region, where we can really see what can be achieved.”

Collaborators involved with the project so far include Professor Dawn Bessarab, research associate Charmaine Green and research assistant Wanda Flanagan from UWA, and Professor Peter O’Sullivan and Dr Jonathan Bullen from Curtin University.

Dr Lin said they had also been fortunate to work with partners from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Queensland Health and WA Primary Health Alliance.

The fellowships are funded through the McGowan Government’s Future Health Research and Innovation Fund.

WACHS regional Aboriginal health consultant Rani Randall, who will lead the Clinical Yarning project for WACHS in the Mid West, described it as “culturally appropriate (and) patient-friendly”.

“It aligns directly with our priority health areas for Aboriginal communities and also works to build cultural competency of our non-Aboriginal workforce — both cornerstones of our long-term vision to improve health outcomes in Aboriginal people,” she said.

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