Fixing Houses For Better Health (FHBH): Immediate improvement in the living
environment to improve the health of Aboriginal Australians.
Paul Pholeros
This paper will outline the basic Housing for Health principles being applied
to improve indigenous peoples' living conditions and some of the key results
of the national Fixing Houses for Better Health project.
In 1985/86 Nganampa Health Council completed an environmental and public health
review that set out some simple principles to improve the health of Aboriginal
people by reducing infectious disease often caused by the living environment,
particularly in children 0 to 5 years age. These principles became known as
"Health Living Practices" and involved the need for functioning
'health hardware' to enable people to carry out the Healthy Living
Practices. Housing for Health: Towards a better living environment for Aboriginal
Australia, published in 1994, documented a project in a small community of Pipalyatjara.
The aims of this work were to:
- define a set of standard, repeatable tests to assess house health and safety
function;
- define what resources were needed to keep community houses fully functioning
for one year;
- document clearly why houses fail and the detail the costs involved in all
maintenance;
- and to assess to what extent the local community were able to be involved
as participants in the housing assessment and fix work.
The success of the Housing for Health project resulted in similar projects in
Queensland and New South Wales during the latter part of the 1990's. During
1999 ATSIC, in consultation with the Federal Department of Housing (now Family
and Community Services) requested Healthabitat carry out a project to assess and
fix 1000 houses nationally. During 2000/01 the national "Fixing Houses for
Better Health" (FHBH) project commenced. Currently FHBH has
- completed fix work to improve the living environment of almost 800 houses
in 21 communities, in 4 states, in remote, rural and suburban environments;
- employed over 200 Aboriginal people in surveying and fixing the houses;
- fixed over 9000 items in the houses (of which less than 200 have been due
to any form of overuse misuse or vandalism);
- improved the ability of people living in the houses to have a safe electrical
supply, have a hot shower, use a toilet and cook a meal.
The paper will discuss in detail the process undertaken, the ability of houses
to deliver health benefits, lessons learned from the project that can inform detailed
design and housing management decisions to improve health.
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