Building better research partnerships by understanding how Aboriginal health communities perceive and use data: a semistructured interview study.
OBJECTIVE
To describe the attitudes and beliefs of health professionals working in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) towards the access, usage and potential value of routinely obtained clinical and research data.


METHODS
Face-to-face, semistructured interviews were conducted with 35 health professionals from 2 urban and 1 regional ACCHS in New South Wales. The interviews were transcribed and themes were identified using an adapted grounded theory approach.


RESULTS
Six major themes were identified: occupational engagement (day-to-day relevance, contingent on professional capacity, emphasising clinical relevance), trust and assurance (protecting ownership, confidence in narratives, valuing local sources), motivation and empowerment (engaging the community, influencing morale, reassuring and encouraging clients), building research capacity (using cultural knowledge, promoting research aptitude, prioritising specific data), optimising service provision (necessity for sustainable services, guiding and improving services, supporting best practice), and enhancing usability (ensuring ease of comprehension, improving efficiency of data management, valuing accuracy and accessibility).


CONCLUSIONS
Participants were willing to learn data handling procedures that could further enhance health service delivery and enable more ACCHS-led research, but busy workloads restrict these opportunities. Staff held concerns regarding the translation of research data into beneficial services, and believed that the outcome and purpose of data collection could be communicated more clearly. Promoting research partnerships, ensuring greater awareness of positive health data and the purposes of data collection, and communicating data in a user-friendly format are likely to encourage greater data use, build research capacity and improve health services within the Aboriginal community.
Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Centre for Kidney Research, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Christian
C
Young
Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Centre for Kidney Research, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Allison
A
Tong
The Sax Institute, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Simone
S
Sherriff
The Sax Institute, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Deanna
D
Kalucy
The Sax Institute, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Peter
P
Fernando
The Sax Institute, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Sumithra
S
Muthayya
Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Centre for Kidney Research, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Jonathan C
JC
Craig
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003153:Community Health Services; D003256:Community Participation; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006302:Health Services Research; D006303:Health Services, Indigenous; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009517:New South Wales; D055815:Young Adult
ACCHS; Aboriginal; Capacity building; Data; QUALITATIVE RESEARCH