What happens when First Nations communities take charge of our own healthcare?

Year after year it's reported that progress on the Closing the Gap targets is not moving fast enough, and in some cases the gap is widening.

Today, only four Closing the Gap targets are on track, with targets around birth weight and life expectancy still falling short.

Why do those figures show a stubborn refusal to improve?

In the first episode of The Break Room, a new NITV Original YouTube series, we ask First Nations healthcare practitioners about the view from within, and what happens when we take charge of our own healthcare.

George Fennemore, a paramedic with the Queensland Ambulance Service, has been working in health for over 30 years.

The Torres Strait Islander man from Erub Island says there is a level of mistrust that exists in communities towards the healthcare system.

"[It's] a generational thing from way back when we were colonised: people always thought about hospitals as places to go to die," he told NITV.

"I think it's just about empowering people to [help them] understand with knowledge and support."

George says Indigenous people's trust in the healthcare system is slowly growing, thanks to healthcare workers like himself.

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Tailoring healthcare to the communities it is being provided to can go a long way to improve outcomes, says Ngajanji woman Dr Tatum Bond.

"The way you have to treat patients is different, because their expectations of health care is different, and their lived experiences are different," she told NITV.

"So treating a patient from Arukun [in Far North Queensland] is different from treating a patient who has grown up and spent their whole life in Cairns."

She says western healthcare also needs to be aware of the diversity of medical thought and practice in communities, not as incompatible, but rather something to be worked with for better outcomes.

"Places like Arukun, they have a really strong black medicine culture," she said.

"I've treated many patients up there who believe strongly in black magic who have felt they have been cursed, so have returned to Country to be treated by the medicine men for what they believe is a curse, but what we believe is a cancer."

When the system has a deeper understanding and applied practice within our communities, we may very well see shifts toward better health for our mob.

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Decolonising health to provide better care for patients

The idea of self-determination in health has a rich history and proven track record in increasing mobs awareness and engagement in their own health.

This includes the establishment of the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) in the 70's, and Aunty Gracelyn Smallwoods 'Condoman' campaign for the prevention of HIV in the 90's.

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Dharawal and Gumbaynggirr woman Melanie Briggs of Waminda Care on the NSW South Coast is further fostering this notion of self-determination as a key tactic to achieving better health outcomes for Blak women and families.

She says that changes within the system and how it views and treats mob need to occur to recognise and enable self-determination, needs to be a priority.

"We have our own belief in ourselves and our ancestors that we are strong people, and we are, to go to a place where we are seen as sickly or we are sick, because of colonisation.

"We just need a place where and a system that has an understanding of who we are as people, and the colonisers and the chaos that comes with that impacts us wholly, our whole wellness."

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"I feel like the next generation and the next generation, I'm hopeful with the things we are doing in our clinical professions as Blakfullas, we're going to encourage the next generation of paramedics, healers, doctors, midwifes and nurses."

She says that successive generations will increasingly enter the health system, and with more mob looking after mob, self-determination and sustainable healthy living will be the result.

Watch the second season of Our Medicine on SBS on Demand, a series that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the front line of Australia's strained medical services, shining a light on First Nations professionals working to achieve better health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and communities.