DURING the swine flu pandemic, people who identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander were "disproportionately impacted", and Kristy Crooks did not want to see that happen with the novel coronavirus.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the manager of the Aboriginal Public Health Team and PhD candidate pushed to embed cultural governance within Hunter New England Health's "Incident Command System".
"We know that our people are at higher risk than the rest of the population, so we needed to tackle the issue early and get something in place so we didn't bear the brunt of this illness," she said.
"In past pandemics, particularly swine flu, we were disproportionately impacted, and we didn't want this to happen this time around.
"I challenged our controller to think about embedding cultural governance within the Incident Command System, because it has never been done before in Australia.
"The team I am leading is all Aboriginal people and a key focus of our work is ensuring there is a culturally-appropriate response for anyone who is confirmed as COVID-positive or is a close contact of a case."
The extra care and support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and their families, was in addition to the routine public health follow up.
"We explore more deeply about how they are coping with isolation, if they have access to things like taps and washing machines, if they need any mental health or social and emotional well-being support, and how they are going with food supply," she said.
"We get down to the nitty gritty that they may not disclose to public health nurses, but with other Aboriginal people, they may be more inclined to be open and honest without fear of judgment."
Ms Crooks said it was important there was cultural inclusion and perspective across all layers of the public health response.
"We wanted to make sure we were providing a culturally-appropriate, safe response that was respectful and meaningful and makes sense for community," she said.
"The only way we could do that was having Aboriginal people leading that response.
"Because it is in Aboriginal hands, we're identifying the issues and we're coming up with the solutions from our lived experience and our perspectives."
Ms Crooks said more than 5000 Aboriginal people had received a COVID-19 test across the Hunter New England district.
"We have only had 11 people who have tested positive - about 4 per cent of the total cases in our district," she said. "But we feel the work is paying off.
"Our ways of being and living together doesn't fit within that 2.4 kids household structure.
"We are often in smaller houses with large families, and that's how we like to stay connected to family and community.
"It's really important to have that cultural inclusion in everything we do."
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