Hearts in Focus is co-designing cardiac screening delivered at the local football club, testing whether this model is feasible, acceptable and able to improve screening uptake for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Hearts in Focus works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to deliver cardiac screening in a familiar place: the local football club. Sudden cardiac death occurs in young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at up to 15 times the rate of the general population, yet access to screening in remote communities remains limited.
We are co-designing a culturally safe screening model with community members, clinicians and Australian Rules Football clubs in the West Kimberley Football League (Broome, Western Australia). Screening covers personal and family history, physical examination, 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG), a brief echocardiogram protocol that also detects rheumatic heart disease, and cardiovascular risk assessment, alongside CPR training and a local pathway to care. Screening champions from the community, including notable Indigenous athletes, local doctors and health workers, help shape the program and encourage people to take part.
Sudden cardiac death is up to 15 times more common in young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than in the general population. Coronary artery disease is the leading cause, followed by rheumatic heart disease, and many of those who die have known cardiac risk factors.
National guidelines support preventive screening and risk factor assessment. We need a culturally safe, well-resourced and co-ordinated way to deliver screening in rural and remote communities.
Screening in sport happens at the training ground, a convenient, familiar and inclusive setting, and has shown high uptake in elite sport. Australian Rules Football has a very high participation rate in Western Australia, engaging more than one in two young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men in remote areas. Women's football is the fastest-growing part of the game, and the Kimberley has run its own women's competition since 2017.
Hearts in Focus translates the approach from elite sport to remote northern Australia, testing feasibility, acceptability and yield, and building local capacity so the program can be sustained and scaled. There are many opportunities for future expansion.
Funding: National Heart Foundation of Australia; National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Cardiac screening programs must be requested, welcomed and shaped by the community. Hearts in Focus prioritises cultural authority and is responsive to the communities it works with. The project is guided at every stage by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and community members, with regular communication throughout.
Cultural security and Aboriginal knowledge systems guide every part of this work. Our ultimate goal is to reduce sudden cardiac death in northern Australia.
We travelled to Broome this year to build meaningful connections and strengthen collaborations with local communities, stakeholders, organisations and project partners. This early engagement is an important foundation for ensuring the project is community-led, culturally appropriate and responsive to local priorities.
During our visit, we had the opportunity to meet with community leaders, local sports coaches, Aboriginal Medical Services, and local medical and research teams. These conversations provided valuable insight into the local context and helped us understand how Hearts in Focus can best support the Broome community.
This engagement will help shape the co-design and governance of Hearts in Focus, including how heart screening, health education and other project activities are delivered, who is involved in decision-making, and how the project can remain culturally safe, accessible, acceptable and responsive.
Being guided by community is central to how we design and deliver the project, and to building strong foundations for its long-term impact. Most importantly, we want to ensure that the project delivers meaningful and ongoing positive health outcomes for community.
By listening, building relationships and working alongside local people and organisations from the outset, we are ensuring that Hearts in Focus reflects the strengths, knowledge, priorities and needs of the Broome community.
Our Hearts in Focus team attended the 74th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand in Sydney.
As part of the Rheumatic Heart Disease for the Modern Cardiologist session, Jessica Orchard and Amber Wombat Kerdel presented on “Setting up research in Indigenous communities.” The presentation focused on the importance of building strong relationships with Aboriginal communities and ensuring community engagement and co-design are part of every stage of research.
The team also shared the Hearts in Focus project, which is exploring how cardiovascular screening can be brought into a community-based setting through football. The project aims to help reduce sudden cardiac death among young people in northern Australia, while ensuring the approach is culturally safe, equitable and informed by Aboriginal knowledge and community priorities.
Attending the conference was also an opportunity to connect with researchers, clinicians and organisations working across the cardiovascular sector. These conversations are helping us build relationships, share knowledge and strengthen connections between cardiovascular research and the communities it aims to serve.
