The ‘Public Health Bush Book’ has been written as a resource for people who work with remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It has been written by people who have worked in, or with, remote community health care teams over many years, and relates their accumulated learning to published national and international evidence.
It is a practical book which takes its name from the ‘Northern Territory Bush Book: A guide for field staff’, in whose 1979 Foreword, DR Charles Gurd, Secretary for Health, wrote:
The contents describe the "portfolio of responsibilities" of community health nurses and other staff in rural areas, as well as the background and treatment of conditions of special importance in the Northern Territory.
Many of these responsibilities are preventive and special attention needs to be given to these to ensure they are done well. (emphasis added)
Health is not just an absence of disease, it is a way of life, and our philosophy as health workers should be to spend more of our time in teaching healthy living… (emphasis added)
That ‘portfolio of responsibilities’ has grown in extent and complexity over the two decades since 1979, and the resources that nourish, record and share our expanding knowledge, practice and capacity, have likewise needed to grow.
Today’s community health care teams have the CARPA Standard Treatment Manual as a well researched guide to managing conditions that are both common and of special importance in the Northern Territory. It incorporates certain basic public health measures such as maternal and infant health, immunisation, screening, early detection, and in the latest edition, brief interventions for healthy lifestyles. The current, third edition has been adopted across Territory Health Services.
This first edition of the ‘Public Health Bush Book’ provides today’s community health care teams with a well researched guide that gives special attention to doing preventive work well, and to promoting health as a way of life. Its foundation is the ‘new public health’ or health promotion approach - to work in ways that acknowledge and strengthen the capacity of people to take rightful control of their own health and lives.
This book is particularly timely in relation to studies being published in the international literature which renew the evidence base for the links that exist between a sense of personal control, social cohesion and physical health. THS has recognised their fundamental interconnectedness in adopting a comprehensive definition of health as mental, social and physical well-being.
This book is also particularly timely in relation to ‘Strategy 21’ - THS Corporate Plan 1999-2003, the founding philosophy and design for our health care action for the next century - most notably, the goal to Strengthen Community Capacity. It is a practical guide that resources community health care workers to work with individuals, families, groups and communities in ways that recognise and reinforce the capacity of people to know what is needed, and how to do it.
The ‘Public Health Bush Book’ is dedicated to all those who have worked for, and who care about, the health of the citizens of the Northern Territory; to better health for Aboriginal citizens; and to our collective future.
Shirley Hendy
Chief Health Officer
January 2000