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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Life-Course Epidemiology and Social Inequalities in Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1462410

Determining the cultural safety of chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: A scoping review

Provisionally accepted
Hannah Woodall Hannah Woodall 1,2,3*Sarah Larkins Sarah Larkins 3Janani Pinidiyapathirage Janani Pinidiyapathirage 1,2Raelene Ward Raelene Ward 4Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans 3
  • 1 Griffith Health, Griffith University, Southport, Australia
  • 2 Rual Medical Education Australia, Toowoomba, Australia
  • 3 James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
  • 4 University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objectives: To assess how the cultural safety of primary care-based chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is determined. Methods: Scoping review of peer-reviewed evaluations of chronic disease interventions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, in which cultural safety is an outcome. Searches included Scopus, Informit, OVID Medline, Emcare and CINAHL including all articles published until September 2023. Results: Searches identified 2225 articles. 1854 articles underwent title and abstract screening, with 97 progressing to full text review. Twenty articles met the inclusion criteria. 75% (n=15) of articles determined cultural safety based solely on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ perspectives, with community acceptance as the most common means of determining cultural safety. In the analysed studies, elements contributing to cultural safety included practitioner behaviour (n=15), knowledge (n=6), skills (n=1) and attitudes (n=4), partnership with community (n=4) and culturally safe services (n=5), and graphics and artwork (n=6). The inconsistent terminology and lack of definitions made comparison of studies challenging.Conclusions This review underscores the importance of adopting the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) definition of cultural safety to standardise terminology and explore the many elements of cultural safety. It is recommended that cultural safety is defined by the community targeted by the intervention. Identification of elements of cultural safety will guide future interventions and reduce reliance on community acceptance as an indirect measure of cultural safety. If chronic diseases interventions are to effectively impact health equity, it is vital to understand cultural safety within these settings.

    Keywords: Cultural safety, Chronic Disease, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, Scoping review, intervention

    Received: 30 Jul 2024; Accepted: 10 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Woodall, Larkins, Pinidiyapathirage, Ward and Evans. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hannah Woodall, Griffith Health, Griffith University, Southport, Australia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.