Effective injury prevention for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hinges on the availability of culturally safe policies, resources and programmes, alongside best-practice research. Contemporary injury prevention research has increasingly centred Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges, yet there is still room for improvement. Identification of relevant resources, policies and programmes, as well as the extent to which injury prevention research meets international criteria for ethical research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples will provide practitioners with critical insights into best-practice injury prevention initiatives.
We examined the breadth and scope of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander injury-related publications, health promotion and practice resources, and policies and programmes available in Australia using a publicly available online database. We then reviewed injury prevention articles published since 2020 against an international criterion for best practice research with Indigenous populations.
There were 1143 injury-related publications (113 specific to injury prevention and safety promotion), 147 policies, 106 resources, and 87 current or past injury prevention programmes. The majority of publications and programmes were focused on responses to violence. Policies focused on safety promotion and resources focused on road safety. The majority of reviewed studies met at least one domain for best-practice research.
While progress has been made for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander injury prevention in Australia, these outcomes have been undermined by stagnation surrounding policy reform and frameworks to support policy implementation. Urgent radical action is needed to prevent Australia’s growing injury inequity gap.