Indigenous Men Taking Their Rightful Place in Society?: a participatory action research process.

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Men's health groups are increasingly being accepted as important strategies in improving health and wellbeing, especially in Indigenous communities. However, it is hard to find systematic documentation and evaluation of such initiatives in the literature. Since August 2001, we have been facilitating and analysing a Participatory Action Research (PAR) process designed to support members of a men's health group in Yarrabah, a rural Aboriginal community near Cairns (north Queensland), take greater control and responsibility for the factors influencing their health and wellbeing. The PAR process is providing initial evidence indicating that the development of men's health groups in Indigenous settings can lead to social and behavioural change and that PAR is potentially a useful tool in working towards social change. The current proposal is a joint initiative between the academic partners and the men's group leadership and proposes among other things to: a) consolidate and extend the existing PAR initiative with members of the Yarrabah Men's Health Group and their community; b) adapt and pilot the PAR model in another north Queensland community; and c) undertake a systematic and comparative evaluation across the two sites to determine the medium -long term usefulness of men's health groups as health promotion strategies especially in rural-remote Indigenous settings. These types of micro-level studies have important implications for the way community development is perceived and approached in Indigenous settings.