Responding to COVID-19 in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities: the importance of strengths-based public administration, cultural safety and working in genuine partnership

This chapter documents the extraordinary achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia in addressing COVID-19. First Nations peoples in Australia are among the at-risk priority populations for the potentially devastating effects of COVID-19, given a complex interaction of social determinants of health, chronic disease and other factors. While previous pandemic events highlighted this potential vulnerability, the opposite has occurred and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia have delivered pandemic statistics better than those of the Australian non-Indigenous population in the first 18 months of the pandemic. Success is due to public management in Australia finally stepping out of the way and acknowledging what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities have been asking for decades: recognise and facilitate resources to support self-determination. This chapter shows how communities drew on outstanding processes of collective action, coordination and communication, facilitated through a self-determined health network architecture and experience with syphilis prevention to stand as a remarkable success in COVID-19 response.