Troy is a Ngangkeri (traditional healer) from Central Australia! The aim of our remote men’s health culture camps is to give tribal men a culturally safe place for deep healing on country.

Traditional healers (Ngangkeri) like Troy work alongside local Aboriginal health workers, Lore bosses and specialist remote doctors. Importantly all men are given a full health check at the camps and an annual health plan that local ACCHO’s manage.

The camps also provide a much-needed platform for the men to voice health issues specific to their own communities. Men talk about the kind of health programs and health messages that work in their own community. Special video message sticks are produced in partnership with local Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHO’s) and presented to local, state and federal health stakeholders. These strategic community based videos are used by agencies as policy and program launch pads to provide a revolutionary geo-cultural approach for future remote men’s health program development and delivery.

The camps provide us with an excellent opportunity to produce language specific health messages and screen these messages back to the men on local media outlets such as Hitnet, ICTV and the new Aboriginal Health TV network.  Importantly the men appearing in health messages are talking in local languages directly to their own countrymen about chronic disease, smoking, alcohol, diabetes, depression and mental illness, diet and nutrition. This geo-cultural community-centric approach to our camps and health messaging is critical to improving efforts around closing the gap for our remote men.

We look forward to sharing the tangible health outcomes from our camps program through our research partners and also sharing many inspiring health stories from the remote men who attend our #bushcamps2019 program.

Ernie Dingo

#Bushcamps2019 national ambassador

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