The Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet has produced a suite of new interactive resources for Environmental Health Practitioners and clinicians to use with their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and clients.
The My healthy home: home health factsheet series aims to provide simple, clear actions to take in each room of the home to prevent illness and the spread of disease. The factsheets were developed in consultation with Nirrumbuk Environmental Health and Services and with guidance from the Expert Reference Panel for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Environmental Health (ERPATSIEH).
The factsheets take a strengths-based approach by outlining some of the issues in the home environment that can affect health and providing practical advice to prevent illness. They use plain language and icons for accessibility and can be downloaded as separate room-based factsheets, or all together as a ‘workbook’, which also includes some simple instructions for making cleaning products at home.
The interactive factsheet PDFs can be used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on their computers or printed out and stuck on the fridge for easy access to information that will help users keep their homes and their families healthy. Users can fill out the details of their local environmental health services on the back of each factsheet, and they are encouraged to contact these services for a variety of home health issues listed on the back page of each factsheet.
