The Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, often known by its acronym OATSIH, is a division of the Australian Government's Department of Health and Ageing. It was set up in 1994 in the then Department of Human Services and Health to give a greater focus on the health needs of Indigenous Australians in mainstream health programs.
On 1 July 1995, following a Government decision to transfer responsibility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission to the Health portfolio, the Office assumed responsibility for providing funding to Aboriginal community controlled health and substance misuse services previously administered by ATSIC.
The long-term strategy of the Office is to improve the access of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to comprehensive primary health care services. The aim is to provide coordinated clinical care, population health and health promotion activities to facilitate illness prevention, early intervention and effective disease management.
Famous quotes containing the words office, aboriginal, strait and/or health:
“Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death by bidding me got too.
Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late to kill me so,
Being double dead: going, and bidding go.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“John Eliot came to preach to the Podunks in 1657, translated the Bible into their language, but made little progress in aboriginal soul-saving. The Indians answered his pleas with: ‘No, you have taken away our lands, and now you wish to make us a race of slaves.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program. Connecticut: A Guide to Its Roads, Lore, and People (The WPA Guide to Connecticut)
“We approached the Indian Island through the narrow strait called “Cook.” He said, “I ‘xpect we take in some water there, river so high,—never see it so high at this season. Very rough water there, but short; swamp steamboat once. Don’t paddle till I tell you, then you paddle right along.” It was a very short rapid. When we were in the midst of it he shouted “paddle,” and we shot through without taking in a drop.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)