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I'm Megan Passey, I work here. I'm the deputy director
of research. I do research mainly around chronic disease prevention and
management,
and quite a lot that's in Aboriginal health. My favourite project at the moment
is the work we're doing with pregnant Aboriginal women. We're developing a
program
to help women quit smoking. Um.
That work's been going on for quite a long time. We're working with the local
community reference group. We've got Aboriginal health workers and some of the
women from the community
are involved and they've come together and they provide a lot of support for that
project.
It wasn't just me that was working on this program, that was - I was with
with Jenny Gale
and Janelle Stirling. Every few months we have a meeting
and they help guide the project to make sure it's culturally safe. And through
that process we've designed a quitting program.
We're doing a pilot test of it, it's being implemented by the local,
um, Aboriginal maternal health service. They provide outreach antenatal care and
they're
providing this quitting program for us. It's just a small pilot at this point
and so far we've had forty percent of women have been quitting smoking.
Look, it's a really intensive program. I think that's a part of it.
I think a part of it is that it's actually implemented by the AMIHS; so it's a
midwife and health worker
who have been working in the community for some time; they've very good relationship
with the women.
They provide an outreach program, and it's very intensive. There's a lot of support goes
in to it there's support for the women, support for the household.
Providing a program like this, if it works, is going to be very cost-effective.
Because the the, um, the risks of smoking through pregnancy, you double your rates of low birth
weight, you double your rates
of par... of p premature birth . A lot of the babies end up in neonatal intensive care
units;
and those are very, very expensive things to run. Obviously, you know, you have to
do a large trial
test that. You have to assess the cost-effectiveness; so that's the plan
for the next phase.