The B.strong story

In response to the significant differences in health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in Queensland (QLD) and the rest of the population, the QLD Government engaged Menzies to develop and deliver a brief health intervention training program to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community health and hospital workers across the state.

Since 2017, the Menzies B.strong Brief Intervention Training Program has delivered training to 1150 health professionals, 62 per cent identifying as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent, building the capacity of QLD’s frontline health and community workers to deliver smoking cessation, nutrition and physical activity brief interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients.

The program comprised a one-day face-to-face workshop, six online modules and practitioner and client resource kits, including a Facebook support group. It was designed to increase knowledge and skills and provide tools to assist with the delivery of brief interventions to promote healthy changes with Indigenous clients.

An evaluation of the B.strong training program demonstrated significant improvements in participants’ knowledge, attitudes, usual practice and skills to promote healthy changes with Indigenous clients.

B.strong Indigenous training facilitator, Grace Ward, was inspired by the passion of the training participants.

“There was one common thread that linked all the workshop sites, and that was the passion and dedication of the B.strong workshop participants in striving to improve the health of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within their community,” Grace said.

Based on the success of the program, the development of a new B.strong training program focused on pregnancy and early life is currently underway.

For more information about B.strong, visit the program's webpage.