The Melbourne School of Population and Global Health (MSPGH) offers postgraduate qualifications that enable a highly skilled public health workforce. Through the university’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program, students gain comprehensive skills and knowledge, with specialist fields that include biostatistics, gerontology, global health, health economics, health policy, Indigenous health, infectious disease epidemiology and sexual health. While Indigenous health is a specialist area that students can choose to study, this evaluation, led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academics, examined the degree to which Indigenous health-related competencies are embedded across the core, capstone and Indigenous Health specialisation units. The review identified strong horizontal integration of teaching Indigenous public health competencies as topics across the core, capstone and Indigenous Health specialisation units. However, inclusion within capstone units was variable and often opportunistic, resulting in inconsistent student exposure to Indigenous public health learning. While it also identified a diversity of learning opportunities to engage with Indigenous knowledges, the evaluation highlighted ongoing gaps in systematic embedding of Indigenous leadership, governance and accountability within curriculum design. Overall, embedding a dedicated Indigenous public health unit as a core subject is recommended to ensure all MPH graduates develop deeper, critically informed competencies.

Recent work by the World Federation of Public Health Associations’ Professional Education Training (WFPHA PET) working group has identified five emerging areas (OneHealth, Systems Thinking, Public Health Ethics, Political Engagement, and Disaster and Emergency Health) within the discipline of public health that practitioners need to have a basic understanding to prepare themselves for the future of the field. However, these areas are not necessarily included in public health competency sets or curricula globally. The WFPHA PET held a fireside chat of experts to discuss the main issues faced in integrating these specialties into public health education, training, and practice. Common threads seen across the panel included: (1) The current pace of change in these areas of public health; (2) ‘Nimble’ ways of identifying emerging (wicked) problems; (3) The need for innovative ways of teaching; (4) The need for sophisticated public health-related communication systems; (5) Understanding current political imperatives. To enhance the capacity of the public health workforce, it is essential to update course materials and integrate new and innovative materials and teaching strategies while retaining core content. This is complex, but necessary to further strengthen the workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic provided us with a unique experience and opportunity to reflect on how and what we teach, with the first step to bolster public health curricula and training to address current competency gaps in emerging priority areas to strengthen the public health workforce.

Objective: To explore the amount and type of research funded under relevant Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Initiatives that addressed public health and prevention from 2018 to July 2023. Methods: Projects funded by six MRFF Initiatives, with objectives relevant to public health and public health nominated as "field of research" by >25% of applicants, were evaluated against a set of public health research criteria and were categorised based on levels of prevention. Results: Fifty-seven per cent of 249 funded projects were categorised as public health research. Projects with curative features, focusing on tertiary (32%) and quaternary (4%) prevention, were as common as projects with earlier preventive features, focussed on primordial (7%) and primary (28%) prevention. The Preventive and Public Health Research Initiative had the lowest proportion of public health research (48%) of the six evaluated Initiatives and a dominance of curative (39%) and non-preventive (26%) research over preventive research (30%). Conclusion: This study highlighted variable levels of public health research across public-health-relevant MRFF Initiatives and generally low proportions of primary and primordial prevention. A greater emphasis on primordial and primary prevention research in public-health-relevant Initiatives could advance prevention in Australia. Implications for public health: There appears to be scope for improvement in the prioritisation of upstream prevention research in public health-relevant MRFF Initiatives and projects. Addressing this may enhance the benefit of MRFF to Australian public health.

Population Medicine considers the following types of articles:• Research Papers -reports of data from original research or secondary dataset analyses.• Review Papers -comprehensive, authoritative, reviews within the journal's scope.These include both systematic reviews and narrative reviews.• Short Reports -brief reports of data from original research.• Policy Case Studies -brief articles on policy development at a regional or national level.• Study Protocols -articles describing a research protocol of a study.• Methodology Papers -papers that present different methodological approaches that can be used to investigate problems in a relevant scientific field and to encourage innovation.• Methodology Papers -papers that present different methodological approaches that can be used to investigate problems in a relevant scientific field and to encourage innovation.

The COVID-19 global pandemic is one example of emergencies that highlight the need for a well-educated public health workforce. Educating specialist public health practitioners poses several challenges for educators, especially when low student, or appropriately qualified staff, numbers threaten viability of courses within individual universities. One solution is teaching programmes delivered through interuniversity collaborations. This study examines the features of two comparative case studies to explore how these correlate with barriers and enablers to sustainability. Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social fields is then utilised to explore the impacts of external influences on interuniversity collaborations that determine their autonomy. A correlation between the purpose, membership, structure and leadership of specialised teaching collaborations and the mechanisms determining their autonomy is revealed and a model for achieving autonomy of interuniversity collaborations is outlined. Finally, a need to expand the use of collaborative specialist public health teaching programmes based on specialty disciplines is discussed.

Population Medicine considers the following types of articles:• Research Papers -reports of data from original research or secondary dataset analyses.• Review Papers -comprehensive, authoritative, reviews within the journal's scope.These include both systematic reviews and narrative reviews.• Short Reports -brief reports of data from original research.• Policy Case Studies -brief articles on policy development at a regional or national level.• Study Protocols -articles describing a research protocol of a study.• Methodology Papers -papers that present different methodological approaches that can be used to investigate problems in a relevant scientific field and to encourage innovation.• Methodology Papers -papers that present different methodological approaches that can be used to investigate problems in a relevant scientific field and to encourage innovation.

Objectives: This paper describes a project designed to quantify the extent to which existing competency frameworks used for educating the public health workforce contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) directly relevant to public health. Study design: This was a qualitative study involving a content and thematic analysis and mapping of nine available public health competency sets against the World Federation of Public Health Association's Global Charter for the Public's Health and the SDGs. Methods: First, the SDG targets directly relevant to public health were selected, then mapped against the elements of the Global Charter to illustrate their alignment with aspects of public health practice. Next, competencies from each respective framework were mapped against the SDG targets, and the results quantified as to the coverage of the SDG targets by each of the frameworks. Results: Overall, very few competencies directly or fully covered the SDG targets in question, however, there were more competencies partially covering the targets. Except for one framework, many issues found in the SDG targets were not explicitly addressed by the competencies in most of the frameworks, namely, migration, human rights, violence, and food and water scarcity. Conclusions: Overall, urgent action is required to ensure public health competency frameworks are more in line with the SDGs and include public health issues that disproportionally affect low- and middle-income countries.

BACKGROUND:Indigenous peoples often have higher rates of morbidity and mortality associated with cardiometabolic disease (CMD) than non-Indigenous people and this may be even more so in urban areas. The use of electronic health records and expansion of computing power has led to mainstream use of artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the onset of disease in primary health care (PHC) settings. However, it is unknown if AI and in particular machine learning is used for risk prediction of CMD in Indigenous peoples. METHODS:We searched peer-reviewed literature using terms associated with AI machine learning, PHC, CMD, and Indigenous peoples. RESULTS:We identified 13 suitable studies for inclusion in this review. Median total number of participants was 19,270 (range 911-2,994,837). The most common algorithms used in machine learning in this setting were support vector machine, random forest, and decision tree learning. Twelve studies used the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) to measure performance. Two studies reported an AUC of >0.9. Six studies had an AUC score between 0.9 and 0.8, 4 studies had an AUC score between 0.8 and 0.7. 1 study reported an AUC score between 0.7 and 0.6. Risk of bias was observed in 10 (77 %) studies. CONCLUSION:AI machine learning and risk prediction models show moderate to excellent discriminatory ability over traditional statistical models in predicting CMD. This technology could help address the needs of urban Indigenous peoples by predicting CMD early and more rapidly than conventional methods.

Objectives: We discuss the implications stemming from a recent competency mapping project on public health workforce education and training programs. Methods: In line with professional practice, we reflected on the results of a major mapping exercise which examined public health competency frameworks against the Global Charter, particularly with respect to the implications for curriculum design. Results: Our reflections identified five key challenges (diversity of frameworks, interpretation challenges, levels of competence, integration in curricula and knowledge vs skills-based competences) for developing internationally consistent credentialling standards. Conclusions: While the Charter provides an international benchmark for public health curricula, we argue that applying an international competency framework is challenging. Anyone working in public health should be trained in all foundation areas of public health to support public health practice and initiatives into the future and they may then choose to specialise in sub-disciplines of public health. Implications for public health: Both theoretical and practical content must be fully integrated across public health programs to operationalise competencies. Utilising the Charter can ensure alignment with the sector needs, and curriculum mapping should be an integral part of a continual and ongoing review process.

This study aimed to determine whether mandatory or non-mandatory cultural safety training would be more effective to address a lack of cultural safety for Indigenous students in tertiary education. Two electronic databases were systematically searched, and articles were included based on reference to mandatory or non-mandatory cultural safety training, and respective outcomes for Indigenous students. Findings were mixed, whereby studies with both mandatory and non-mandatory cultural safety training have proven successful, suggesting potential for a mixed-methods model to be effective. Effectiveness can also be dependent on the context of the study and its associated delivery methods. These findings suggest that how cultural safety training is implemented may be more influential than whether or not it is mandated. This is a potential research topic for future studies that look at cultural safety for Indigenous peoples.

Reproductive coercion and abuse (RCA) interferes with a person’s reproductive autonomy and can be classified into behaviours that are pregnancy promoting or pregnancy preventing (including coerced abortion). However, prevalence data are lacking, and little is known about whether particular forms of RCA are more or less common. The aims of our study were to explore how frequently people seeking pregnancy counselling reported RCA, the proportions reporting the different forms of RCA, and whether there were different trends based on a range of demographic factors. Data were collected from 5107 clients seeking counselling support for their pregnancy between January 2018 and December 2020 from two leading providers of pregnancy counselling and sexual and reproductive health services in Australia, Marie Stopes Australia and Children by Choice. Counsellors identified and recorded the presence of RCA and whether the behaviour was pregnancy promoting and/or pregnancy preventing. Demographic factors included age, and whether the person identified as being from a migrant or refugee community or as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person. RCA was identified in 15.4% of clients, with similar proportions disclosing RCA towards pregnancy (6%) and towards pregnancy prevention or abortion (7.5%), and 1.9% experiencing RCA towards pregnancy and abortion concurrently. There were no differences based on age or whether the person identified as being from a migrant or refugee background, though people who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander experienced RCA that was significantly more likely to be pregnancy promoting. RCA is commonly disclosed by people seeking support in a pregnancy counselling context, and coercion and abuse is equally likely to be towards pregnancy promotion or pregnancy prevention/abortion. Given the prevalence and negative impacts of RCA, regardless of age and background, we recommend sensitive and culturally respectful enquiry around experiences of RCA be embedded in healthcare, health education, and health research. Reproductive coercion and abuse (RCA) is behaviour that interferes with a person’s decision to become pregnant or to continue a pregnancy. We classified RCA into behaviours that attempt to promote pregnancy or to prevent/end a pregnancy. Drawing on data collected from 5107 people seeking counselling support for their pregnancy from two Australian services, this research explored how common the different types of RCA are. The research also looked at whether a person’s age or whether the person identified as being from a migrant or refugee community or as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person made any difference to the type of RCA they experienced. We found that 15.4% of people reported RCA, with similar proportions reporting behaviours attempting to promote pregnancy and prevent/end pregnancy. Around 2% reported experiencing both forms of RCA. We found that there were no differences in frequency of RCA based on age or whether the person identified as being from a migrant or refugee background, although we found that people who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander were proportionally more likely to experience RCA that was pregnancy promoting. Given how common RCA is, regardless of age and background, we recommend sensitive and culturally respectful enquiry around experiences of RCA be included in any conversations around sexual and reproductive health care and education.

Introduction For over 40 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community-Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) in Australia have led strategic responses to address the specific needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. Globally, there has been rapid growth in urban Indigenous populations requiring an adaptive primary healthcare response. Patient-centred medical homes (PCMH) are an evidenced-based model of primary healthcare suited to this challenge, underpinned by principles aligned with the ACCHS sector—relational care responsive to patient identified healthcare priorities. Evidence is lacking on the implementation and effectiveness of the PCMH model of care governed by, and delivered for, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations in large urban settings.Method and analysis Our multiphased mixed-methods prospective cohort study will compare standard care provided by a network of ACCHS to an adapted PCMH model of care. Phase 1 using qualitative interviews with staff and patients and quantitative analysis of routine primary care health record data will examine the implementation, feasibility and acceptability of the PCMH. Phase 2 using linked survey, primary care and hospitalisation data will examine the impact of our adapted PCMH on access to care, relational and quality of care, health and wellbeing outcomes and economic costs. Phase 3 will synthesise evidence on mechanisms for change and discuss their implications for sustainability and transferability of PCMHs to the broader primary healthcare systemEthics and dissemination This study has received approval from the University of Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee (2021/HE00529). This research represents an Aboriginal led and governed partnership in response to identified community priorities. The findings will contribute new knowledge on how key mechanisms underpinning the success and implementation of the model can be introduced into policy and practice. Study findings will be disseminated to service providers, researchers, policymakers and, most importantly, the communities themselves.

OBJECTIVES:We quantified the contents of existing public health competency frameworks against the elements of the World Federation of Public Health Associations' Global Charter for the Public's Health.METHODS:We conducted a desktop analysis of eight public health competency frameworks publicly available on the internet. Using a pre-formed template, competency statements from each framework were mapped against the elements of the Global Charter-core public health services (Protection, Promotion and Prevention) and overarching enabling functions (Information, Governance, Capacity, and Advocacy). We then quantified coverage of the Charter's elements in each of the frameworks.RESULTS:We found that although the public health competency frameworks vary considerably in terms of coverage and focus, they all cover every element contained in the Global Charter. However, there were a number of areas of competency identified in some frameworks not explicitly referred to in the Charter including cultural safety, human rights and systems thinking.CONCLUSIONS:The Global Charter provides a mechanism for comparing competency sets, checking public health curricula content, informing competency framework and curricula (re)design, and planning and monitoring workforce needs.

OBJECTIVE:Internationally, work is underway to develop or revise public health graduate competencies, of which Indigenous public health competencies are a subset in Australia. This paper outlines the summative results from a review of Master of Public Health (MPH) programs undertaken to determine the level of coverage of Indigenous health in core content and to explore factors that influence the extent of integration.METHODS:Of the 22 Australian universities offering an MPH program at the commencement of this study, seven were eventually reviewed using a mixed methods approach.RESULTS:Results showed varying levels of relevant content in both core and elective subjects. Not all reviewed universities taught all the competencies in their core curriculum and some universities did not cover all the competencies in either the core or elective subjects.CONCLUSION:These findings highlight the need for inclusion of the Indigenous public health competencies to be made obligatory in MPH programs. Implications for public health: Significant gaps remain in public health curricula enabling students to develop competencies that enable them to become judgement safe practitioners when working with Indigenous peoples and communities. A revised curriculum framework document provides a range of useful strategies and resources to remedy these omissions.

In Australia, graduates of Master of Public Health (MPH) programs are expected to achieve a set of core competencies, designed to ensure they will be culturally safe practitioners when working with Indigenous communities. This study reviewed a sample of MPH programs to determine the level of integration that has been achieved since these core competencies were developed. In this article, we will focus on the innovative data analysis process used for the reviews. The reviews were undertaken by a national network of leading academics in Indigenous public health, including those from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds. As each review team consisted of different members from the network, there was a need to ensure consistency in the data analysis process across all the reviews. The researchers chose to use the Leximancer V4 qualitative software data analysis tool to enhance the validity of the study outcomes. One of the limitations found using this approach was that the Indigenous voice was underrepresented in the output from the software tool; hence, a manual thematic analysis was subsequently applied to the discussion threads, to identify themes within the findings. By combining the conceptual and thematic analysis, the research team was able to bridge the gap created by the weaknesses of the two data analysis methods and incorporate both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews to the interpretation of the findings, while maintaining consistency throughout the review process.

‘Students as Partners’ (SaP) is a contemporary teaching and learning practice in higher education that has seen growing uptake in universities across Australia, and around the world. As an alternative to conventional models of practice, it repositions staff and students as active collaborators in a process of reciprocal learning and working (Healey, Flint, & Harrington, 2014). These reimagined partnerships are formed across diverse settings and for varied purposes. Students and staff come together as co-teachers, co-researchers, co-creators of curriculum and pedagogy, and co-inquirers within the higher education space (Healey et al., 2014). It is in this final place that this presentation is located. In 2017, 11 SaP pilot projects were implemented as part of a university-wide student strategy at The University of Queensland. Pilot Nine was allocated the task of evaluating the implementation of the program. The evaluation team, consisting of two student partners, two academics and a professional staff member, sought to explore and understand the phenomena of partnerships, and how students and staff perceive the experience of working in partnership. An early review of the evaluation literature indicated that there appeared to be a gap in the reporting of negative outcomes. Consequently, the evaluation team sought to explore both the benefits, and challenges experienced by students and staff throughout the process. A pre-post survey design elicited responses that highlighted both these aspects of the SaP projects. This showcase presentation will outline the evaluation design process, its implementation and the outcomes of the program evaluation. It will also focus on lessons learnt from the perspective of the Pilot Nine evaluation team, which as a result of early interactions within the team, adopted a highly reflective approach to the SaP process and outcomes. The original analysis, aligned with this insight, provides a notably rich understanding of the enabling and constraining mechanisms that may be at work within the SaP context. This presentation addresses the Pathways, Partnerships and Communities conference sub-theme in a literal way. By presenting the findings of an internal evaluation of a SaP university-wide program, it provides multiple insights into the benefits and challenges of students collaboratively working with staff across a number of contexts. As universities adjust to meet the ongoing demands of the 21st century, the Students as Partners strategy appears to support a model of cooperation and teamwork that can be beneficial to higher education. By constantly evaluating the process, new insights and understandings can only improve the practice for both students and staff alike.

This case study was designed as one of many pilot projects to inform the scaling-up of Students as Partners (SaP) as a whole-of-institution strategy to enhance the student learning experience. It sought to evaluate the other pilots in order to understand the phenomena of partnerships and how students and staff perceive the experience of working in partnership. It also sought to explore the extent of benefits and challenges experienced by staff and students throughout the process and identify potential implications for future implementation.

For universities, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Public Health Curriculum Framework provides the tools to integrate the impacts of history, social determinants and the cultural dimensions of health across and within national and international curriculums, and how they impact on contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practice and research.