CA SE STUDY Institute for Urban Indigenous Health: Birthing in Our Community Program Healthy and strong babies and families It’s about understanding what that family unit looks like, so we can put appropriate supports in place. We are not just here for antenatal care but for family wellbeing. It is about us leaning into each other, keeping out of the hospital system and creating a space where our families feel safe and can control their health journeys.” Kristie Watego, General Manager, Family Health and Wellbeing at the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health “We don’t just want a beautiful baby born on the day, we are here to help raise strong, black, deadly families, so we build capacity within our families to be healthy and fit in mind, body and soul, and to know it’s okay to lean into support that’s offered.” This is how Bundjalung woman Kristie Watego describes her work as General Manager, Family Health and Wellbeing at the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH). IUIH is a partner in the Birthing in Our Community (BiOC) program in Brisbane with the Mater Mothers’ Hospital and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service. BiOC’s success made national headlines last year after National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funded research, published in the international Lancet Global Health journal, found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies in the program were 50 percent less likely to be born premature. The program also delivered other major benefits, with the research finding that mothers in the program were more likely to attend five or more antenatal appointments, less likely to need a planned caesarean or an epidural in labour, and more likely to be able to exclusively breastfeed on discharge. Behind the outstanding clinical successes of BiOC is a powerful story of self-determination, of community creating and leading its own solutions, and a strong focus on cultural and social determinants of health, especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. BiOC emerged from a Murri antenatal clinic run every Thursday at the Mater by Aunty Denise Watego. However, at that time, women still had to have their babies in mainstream systems, where they risked missing out on important social and cultural supports in fractured health systems and being subject to systemic racism and stereotyping. If we are reducing the risk of a baby being born premature, we are reducing the risk of that baby dying in childhood, of experiencing disability and developing chronic disease such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or kidney disease later in life.” “We have literally closed the gap for some of these families. Kristie Watego, General Manager, Family Health and Wellbeing at the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health PHOTO: Baby Luke born as part of the Birthing in Our Community program (Kristie Watego) 28 Transforming Power: Voices for Generational Change