title: Education resources in remote Australian Indigenous community dog health programs: a comparison of community and extra-community-produced resources.
abstract: Commercial dog health programs in Australian Indigenous communities are a relatively recent occurrence. Health promotion for these programs is an even more recent development, and lacks data on effective practices. This paper analyses 38 resources created by veterinary-community partnerships in Indigenous communities, to 71 resources available through local veterinary service providers. On average, community-produced resources used significantly more of the resource area as image, more imagery as communicative rather than decorative images, larger fonts and smaller segments of text and used images of people with a range of skin tones. As well as informal registers of Standard Australian English, community-produced resources used Aboriginal English and/or Creole languages in their text, while extra-community (EC)-produced resources did not. The text of EC resources had Flesh-Kincaid reading grade levels that excluded a large proportion of community recipients. Also, they did not cover some topics of importance in communities, used academic, formal and technical language, and did not depict people of a representative range of skin tones. As such, community-produced resources were more relevant to the unique situations in remote communities, while EC resources were often inappropriate and in some cases could even distance recipients by using inappropriate language, formats and imagery.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, 425 Werombi Road, Camden, NSW 2570, Australia. sophiec@amrric.org
authors.forename: Sophie Elizabeth
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Constable
authors.forename: Roselyn May
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Dixon
authors.forename: Robert John
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Dixon
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003153:Community Health Services / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000600:supply & distribution; D004283:Dog Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D004285:Dogs; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D012424:Rural Population; D013664:Teaching Materials; D014730:Veterinary Medicine / Q000379:methods