The Purpose
(Picture: Suzanne Andrews, NATSIHA, Acting CEO)
The Northern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Alliance (NATSIHA) is the regional peak body representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHO) in Far North Queensland. NATSIHA membership comprises of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health & Wellbeing Services (ATSICCH&WS) located throughout Far North Queensland and works with these services and the communities they serve to ensure we have regional representation and advocacy at the state and federal level.
NATSIHA is driven to provide regional support to the members and work with services to ensure a collective approach is given to regional focuses and topics.
We have strong cohesion and collectiveness within our service that allows for seamless and efficient responses to be generated to Far North Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing. NATSIHA also works with members to obtain sustainability and continuation of works to the various communities and groups each service areas.
ATSICCH&WS are the leading provider of effective primary health care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, families and communities. NATSIHA is unique in that of the 50,000 plus Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Far North Queensland, our Members provide culturally appropriate health services to over 70% of this population.
We aim to provide quality holistic health services in a culturally appropriate manner to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities in the region, intending to raise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health status to a level equivalent to the wider Australian community through regional representation at the Local, State and National level.
Statement of Intent
NATSIHA believes that community control is fundamental in achieving equitable and high-quality health care for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Far North Queensland. It is the basis on which all our member organisations deliver services to their individual communities and is a primary principle in the operations of NATSIHA.
NATSIHA's strategic direction is guided by consultation between our Board of Directors, member organisations, NATSIHA CEO, and various stakeholders. Achieving the goals will only be possible through the ongoing support from our members and communities, through continuous and transparent consultation and advocacy on a regional platform.
NATSIHA is a regional, member‑based organisation founded out of both protest and necessity.
In 2000, when only three ACCHOs operated in Far North Queensland, Wuchopperen Health Service, Mamu Health Service and Mulungu Health Service, their Boards, elected from the community, made a difficult and courageous decision. They withdrew from the then-state body, the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Forum (QAIHF), believing that the most northern ACCHOs would be better served by advocating for themselves, supporting one another, and collaborating directly. It was a challenging period for the sector, but it was within this environment that NATSIHA was born.
With no funding, only determination and collective leadership. The early Boards tasked their CEOs at the time, Nancy Long, Karen Croft (Dec.) and Gordon Gertz, with establishing a constitution. They pooled what limited funds they could to engage Cleveland Fagan (Dec.), who drafted the first NATSIHA constitution. NATSIHA became a company limited by guarantee in May 2003, sustained almost entirely by member contributions.
Over the following years, new ACCHOs were established and several existing community‑controlled health organisations became members: Apunipima Cape York Health Council, Girriny Yealamucka Health Services Aboriginal Corporation, Mookai Rosie Bi-Bayan, Gindaja Treatment and Healing Indigenous Corporation, NPA Family and Community Services Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation, to the newest service, the Torres Health Indigenous Corporation.
While a few modest projects were delivered in the early years, NATSIHA’s real strength lay in the peer support and practical collaboration between members. Sending staff to assist each other, transferring assets, coordinating mobile dental services (initially through Wuchopperen), and collectively advocating for greater investment in community‑controlled primary health care across FNQ. NATSIHA held meetings throughout the Cape and helped take the message of community control to the Torres Strait. Although each ACCHO has its own unique story, their shared foundation, community control as a lived expression of self‑determination, has remained constant for more than two decades.
As membership grew, so did opportunities. Members endorsed NATSIHA to act as a fund holder, subcontracting services across the region. A major shift came in 2017, when NATSIHA became the regional contract holder for the Commonwealth’s Integrated Team Care Program, delivered through the NQPHN. This expanded NATSIHA’s operational footprint to 14 funded services from Mackay in the south to the Torres Strait and NPA in the north.
Today, NATSIHA’s nine members operate in 27 locations, from Girrimay Country (Murry Upper) south of Innisfail, west to Mt Garnet, to the tip of Cape York Peninsula and across the Torres Strait Islands. Together, Members bring more than $150 million annually into the region and employ over 1,000 people, around 70% of whom identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
From the first ACCHO established in Cairns in 1979 (Wuchopperen), the sector now represents nearly 50 years of combined leadership in primary health care and specialised programs, from drug and alcohol services to tailored mother and baby care, delivered across some of the most remote and diverse communities in Queensland, from islands to discrete communities, rural towns and urban hubs.
With renewed investment and policy settings strengthening regional capacity, the next decade is poised to accelerate growth, leadership, and health system reform, expanding community‑controlled health care for the more than 45,000 First Nations people who live on Country or call Far North Queensland home.
NATSIHA acknowledges and pays respect to Elders past, present and future emerging leaders. We identify the Traditional Owners of this land which continues to be under their ongoing custodianship and guidance we acknowledge and pay respect.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised this website may contain images, voices and names of people who have passed.
