The ABCD project is a continuous quality improvement project that aims to improve health outcomes through assisting health services to improve their systems for delivery of best practice care.

Originally the ABCD project focused on chronic disease – hence the acronym ABCD – Audit and Best practice in Chronic Disease. The project approach was very successful and showed significant improvements in the quality of care and improved diabetes outcomes. The current extension phase of the project is targeting a wider range of primary health care priorities, including child, maternal and mental health and examining factors that determine the success of wider roll out of the ABCD approach.

The project uses an action-research approach to work with health centre staff to identify strengths and weaknesses in their systems, set goals for improvement, develop strategies to achieve these goals and assess the effectiveness of these strategies in improving key aspects of primary health care. Originally the project aimed to investigate the nature, use and impact of organisational systems (and activities) in and around remote health centres in relation to the prevention, early detection and management of chronic disease, and introduce a quality improvement process.

The subsequent aim of the extension phase of the project is to examine the application of the ABCD approach to other priority aspects of primary health care and to examine the requirements for routinisation of systematic quality improvement in Indigenous primary care services.

This research has already had and continues to have a significant impact on policy and practice in Indigenous primary care. The project has made a very substantial contribution to informing the national Healthy for Life Program – a major and now ongoing initiative of the Australian government in Indigenous health. The current extension phase of the project will make a major contribution to informing the system requirements for wider roll out and achieving sustained engagement and improvement by primary health care services.

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