workshop session 6

1.40pm - 2.40pm The Healthy Blood Healthy Body project: Using a co-design methodology to foster meaningful engagement with Aboriginal peoples who inject drugs. 

The Healthy Blood Healthy Body project team. 

Background and purpose: It is widely acknowledged that that health interventions designed and implemented by those unfamiliar with the context often fail to have impact. Co-design is a participatory approach employed to identify and solve problems in practice and increasingly in research. Engaging end users and stakeholders, including those from affected populations, to identify issues and be central to planning, designing, and implementing health promotion interventions can rebalance power dynamics whereby all members have a more equal say and stake in the research process, resulting in more beneficial and impactful outcomes. The approach moves community engagement along the spectrum of participation and supports international principles such as the Meaningful Involvement of People Living with HIV (MIPA). Co-design is an increasingly preferred method of research, however, there is a paucity of literature reporting in descriptive detail about how this methodology has been employed to address important health issues. Target Audience, Workshop Strategies, Key Learnings: The proposed workshop will use the Healthy Blood Healthy Body project as a case study to demonstrate to participants how a co-design methodology has been applied to a health intervention project. Healthy Blood Healthy Body is a strengths-based, co-designed project that is trialling five Aboriginal-led strategies to increase access to needle and syringe programs for Aboriginal peoples who inject drugs to reduce the harms associated with unsafe injecting behaviours. Aimed primarily at those working in research and health promotion, this interactive workshop will use a range of engaging activities to highlight the emergent and adaptive nature of a co-design approach, and how such an approach has fostered the meaningful engagement of Aboriginal peoples in research. The challenges encountered and overcome will also feature in the workshop, along with the benefits of providing a safe space for diverse perspectives across policy, research, practice, and lived experience to come together for a shared purpose. This workshop is an opportunity for knowledge, skill, and cultural development and exchange, with participants strongly encouraged to share their experiences with co-design methodologies. Relevance to Symposium Theme: With the Healthy Blood Healthy Body project focused on reducing harms associated with unsafe injecting behaviours, including blood-borne viruses, the proposed workshop aligns with the symposium focus on community and workforce actions for the elimination of HIV, hepatitis C, and congenital syphilis transmission. The Healthy Blood Healthy Body co-design workshop has applicability across the five symposium themes, with particular relevance to the ‘research, surveillance and evaluation’ and ‘health promotion and community engagement’ themes.