The Remote Aboriginal Communities’ Children’s Environment Health Indicator Project aims to develop and trial indicators of children’s environmental health for use at the community level as a means to inform a rational framework for consultation, decision-making, planning and impact assessment of environmental health and other related programs and activities in remote Australian Aboriginal communities. There are two phases to this research:

• to develop causal frameworks that can represent a simplified version of a community’s underlying concept of reality and makes this view of the world explicit to all concerned
• based on the content of frameworks identify indicators of children’s environmental health and develop a survey tool for use at community level.

The benefit of developing and using indicators at the local level is said to lie in their capacity to be a democratic tool for engaging citizens and communities in informed discussions about shared goals and priorities, for use in developing policy, and as a monitoring and reporting tool. In the case of remote Indigenous communities the use of indicators has the potential to promote inter-sectoral harmonisation; achieve a joint approach to problem solving; promote an integrated approach to service delivery; maximise the effective use of existing resources; and provide the basis at the community level for future environmental health CQI programs.

Environmental health indicators can provide a means to make community members more aware of the impact that physical and social environmental factors have on shaping individuals’ behaviour and health.  In disadvantaged communities, the information generated by using indicators can provide a powerful tool to advocate for additional community resources and to raise public awareness on environmental health issues.

We hope to develop indicators and a survey tool that is relevant and well accepted by all government and non-government key stakeholders so it will be adopted and used by key stakeholders in such a way that it will lead to incremental and sustainable improvements in children’s living environments in remote Aboriginal communities. Consequently, leading to a reduction in the high burden of infection currently experienced by children and their improved growth and development.