Info sites and clearinghouses: one stop shops for local health information and resources

In 2006, Hunter New England Population Health, a unit of the Hunter New England Area Health Service (HNEAHS), situated in NSW, ran a scoping project to determine what electronic information was available on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health that reflected the health of the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This exercise revealed that little information on the local community was available, with information being limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. The search also confirmed that NSW data was inadequate to non-existent, and even more of a concern, was the lack of regional data. Within this context, the question arose, how can health services develop evidence-based services, if they cannot establish the health needs of their local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population? A grant from the University of Newcastle was applied for and awarded to establish an info site of social, health and wellbeing information for Indigenous people, and in particular, the Indigenous population of the area serviced by HNEAHS. The funding was used to employ an Applications Developer, who had particularly good skills in database development and web sites, and a Research Officer who searched for the initial literature sources for the site which became known as ‘Aboriginal Health Info’ site.