Educators and health professionals from around the country gathered at the University of Wollongong this week to finalise the curriculum for Australia's first course in Indigenous Trauma Recovery.
It is adapted from a program developed at the USA's Harvard University that has already been used to assist earthquake survivors in Japan and victims of the Iraq wars.
Program coordinator Debra Hocking says Wollongong University became involved via a local academic who was studying under Harvard trauma expert Richard Mollica.
"They were just chatting and he said you should see the state of things in Australia so he came out, the co-ordinator of the Harvard program, and travelled around the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Queensland.
"And what he saw was just amazing, he had never seen anything quite like it.
"You know people living in third world conditions, the amount of violence, the amount of drugs, child sexual abuse and so on."
Ms Hockey says the program responds to a critical need within Aboriginal communities and draws on a wide range of academic and community expertise.
One of the course contributors to travel to Wollongong, Ngiare Brown from the National Aboriginal Controlled Health Organisation, says part of her work involves advising on how to implement key initiatives.
"Largely around the primary secondary and tertiary prevention kind of model and how we address it in terms of community level education and awareness," she said.
"But then how we identify and deal with people that are at risk or vulnerable, as well as being able to provide the kinds rehabilitation and ongoing care for those that are already affected."
The course is being developed at UOW's Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health with the first intake expected in June.
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