Malinda Steenkamp, Northern Rivers Department of Rural Health, University of Sydney Funding: Supported by the PHCRED Strategy and NHMRC project grant Team members: Professor Lesley Barclay and the 1+1=A Healthy Start to Life Team

Indicators are an important tool for evaluating the impact and performance of health services and policies. Their usefulness, however, relies heavily on their relevance and suitability to the task.

After identifying 660 indicators from 42 sets relevant to maternal and infant care, this innovative project has developed a set of appropriate indicators that have pragmatic value for remote-dwelling Aboriginal women and infants who access maternal and infant health (MIH) services in the Northern Territory.

A number of initiatives to improve remote Aboriginal MIH care in the Northern Territory are underway and evaluating policies and services is imperative. To establish suitable indicators, this project developed a conceptual framework to underpin the refinement of the 660 indicators originally identified.

Subsequent lists of indicators were reviewed by an expert group and further refined to establish a set of 45 relevant and valuable indicators.

As part of a larger research project designed to improve MIH for remote dwelling Aboriginal families, the new indicators will be used to monitor the health service performance and will inform MIH initiatives.

The indicators reflect the direction of national primary health care policy – including a focus on patient centered care that is accessible, high quality, clinically and culturally appropriate – and therefore offer a significant new tool to inform health services and policy-making that are of value to Aboriginal MIH care.