 as usual, we'll start off with an acknowledgement of country as well if I can work out how to go to the next slide. There we go. So I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners and their custodianship of the land on which we produce our work, the land of the Ugra and the Turrubal people. We pay our respects to our ancestors past, present and future who continue cultural and spiritual connections to country. We acknowledge their valuable contributions to Australian and global society. I also recognise that I'm not producing this work as a single independent author. I'm drawing on the knowledge, experiences and wisdom of my elders, family and community. I'm privileged to have the opportunity to gain formal education and produce this work under the promise of continuing commitment to community, culture and country. Thanks, Keely. All right. So a little bit about us just so you know who we are before we blab on for 30 minutes. My name is Keely. I actually have pre-now and I have family connections to the Ugra people. I've got an undergraduate degree in science and at the moment I'm working on a master's of public health and a diploma of Oslo in hopes of becoming a doctor one day. So I forever student. And my name's Gean Wheeler. So I'm an incredible man from northern New South Wales, but I grew up on none of our country in Canberra. And yeah, just really happy to share this important project with you today. All right. So we're going to just start off with a little bit about the importance of real flexibility in research. So it's really reflection that's applied professionally and on your practice. So it's not just the mental event and it needs to be invested in action. And Dr. Martin Nakhada, a Torres Strait Islander man and a renowned researcher and academic, defined indigenous standpoint theory, which is that third point here, as a method of inquiry, a process for making more intelligible a corpus of objectified knowledge about us as an emergent organiser's understanding of our lived reality. Now I interpret this pretty simply. It's that our natural and built worlds influence and determine the way we think and act what we value and what we're passionate about. This thinking has links to Aboriginal ways of knowing being doing also means our ways of knowing being doing influence our research and influences the ways in which we conduct and present research. And so I think it's important to start with our own standpoints. Quite briefly, given our 20 minute time limit, I was this gender, you grew a woman and was born on Inungai land in Central West Queensland to my mother and father for Aboriginal Chinese and Irish English descent, respectively, currently live in the land of the younger and two of the people in North Brisbane in a house owned by my parents as such either meant privilege and guaranteed financial and housing security. This part of my identity, like all others, has shaped the way I view and interact with the world. As a direct result of colonial settler activity in Australia during the 20th century, my Aboriginal Chinese grandfather was removed from his family and relocated to reserve. The trauma he endured alongside the physical removal led to prolific loss of connection to culture, community and country. He married a white woman of Irish descent and had two children who both married white men. I've such a very light skin and pass as a non-Indigenous Australian, but I still long for what our family is lost. To gain closer connection with my culture, community and country, I study and work in Indigenous led or focus spaces where possible and will continue to do this while I study public health. And in terms of where I'm coming from, so my family from Northern New South Wales, as I mentioned, and there was two brothers in our family and one of our brothers moved to Logan in Brisbane and lived a very proud Aboriginal life. The other brother, which is the side of the family that I come from, moved to Sydney and pretended to be Spanish and, as a result, sort of worked into a more of a non-Indigenous framework with non-Indigenous partners and things like that. And basically that led to, again, our light skin, as Keeley mentioned. But what that presents to us is leveraging of insider-outsider theory is that we present as both an insider within the Aboriginal community, but on some levels also an outsider because of our skin colour, but also the fact that we do exist in a pretty high profile non-Indigenous organisation, but we are working in First Nations Health to advance excellence there. Keeley? Yeah, thank you, Keeley. And just some terminology, so throughout this discussion, we're going to try and use the term First Nations. This is also in place of Indigenous Australians or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but we opt for First Nations because it recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were the first peoples of this land. We've been here since time immemorial with fossil records indicating presence to at least 60,000 years ago. And as for yarning, given the structure of a conference, there's some things we need to have, like a PowerPoint and a 25-minute time limit. So it's not traditional yarning, but at its core, our presentation is a yarn. We're harmoniously communicating and we're sharing our work for the past six months with equal voices. And some people think yarning means knitting or crocheting. And at UQ, I've had a few yarning circles where people have thought they will, but this is just a chat, no knitting required. And as for our partnership, it began with a UQ event called Carpe Futurum, which is lesson four sees the future. So this started earlier this year and we had researchers, so senior staff members submit their projects and a student panel, which I was fortunate enough to sit on, chose which projects aligned with the interests mentioned at this Carpe Futurum event. So we're matching up the interests of youth with the capacity and availability of the researchers. So the process kind of went as a full-time block in the winter break and then one day per week throughout the semester. So we're nearing the end of it now. And I'm going to move in UQ. Yeah, so the project that I actually submitted to the program was based around moving with culture and moving with culture is geared towards co-designing a movement-based program that promotes social emotional well-being. And what we aim to do is embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing within the program in order to promote cultural reflectiveness and to give the program greater reach within the First Nations community. The community that we're piloting with at the moment is Yarraba in Northern Queensland and a beautiful community. And I guess one of the things that we found immediately was that clearly when she applied for it, obviously getting her to Yarraba was quite tricky over and over again for multiple visits. So we had to pivot a little bit on the project and we decided that we would either project towards not only the co-design but establishing co-design methodology within a First Nations community and because that was the essential component to this action, to this project. And so what we wanted to do was focus on the co-design and how best to do it so that we could co-design better in the future and get a really good take on what was out there in terms of the research around co-design healing. Yeah, so when this role was kind of advertised, it was things about quantitative and qualitative research but in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. And that's what really drew me in. It was part of the opportunity to give back to community while also gaining valuable skills and building on my past experiences. I see opportunities like these as an opportunity to connect with culture and community even if not directly with the Yucca people. While distinct cultural groups, First Nations Australians have a shared lived experience in surrounding myself with these people just like I can in work and education environments increases the likelihood of it being a culturally safe environment where we can all thrive. So we might jump into a bit of our project now. Still I've got a hang of flicking through the slide but we kind of started off by defining and looking into the practices of co-design. And there are a few different toolkits and guides that came up across co-design but also ethical research because the way you interact with First Nations people needs to be well thought through and it needs to put them at the centre. So experience-based co-design toolkit brings together existing evidence and resources from the United Kingdom and New Zealand. It has used some Australian case studies for relevancy with various definitions throughout. Some of them are really relevant and others not so much. For one there was one definition that was voluntary or involuntary involvement of users but for First Nations stakeholders we really don't want to be looking at involuntary involvement. For decades First Nations people were researched on not with or by. That's something we're definitely shifting away from. The AIAP says ethical guidelines for research with Aboriginal and Trisha Islander people. It's not explicitly co-designed but it's critical that any research with and by First Nations is ethical. So this informs our co-design indirectly and it's central to our research and the formulation of our co-design framework which we'll look back to soon. The final guide is an approach to co-producing so co-designing in research projects specifically. So it has key features of sharing power including all perspectives and respecting and valuing the knowledge of people working in the team. There's also building and maintaining relationships as well as reciprocity I can never say that. Reciprocity killing. Thank you. You got it. So yeah now that we have a strong theoretical background we could just move into the co-design research but there was actually nuanced issue of knowing what was authentic and actual co-design versus what is just research with or even on First Nations people with co-design used as merely a buzzword and so our project was born. Still can't click and it was effective co-design of health research in partnership with First Nations communities a systematic review to assess key methods and processes. To promote the reflexivity of the current research three authors on our team are Aboriginal researchers with backgrounds in community engagement co-design and Indigenous research methodology. The fourth author has an editing role and was involved to leverage their expertise in publishing. Before beginning this study we were confirming that there were no recent systematic reviews and we worked on some search terms including co-design at First Nations and variations of the latter such as Indigenous Aboriginal Torres Straitology etc as I mentioned earlier. Key and I then independently assessed the studies against the four criteria rubric which was based on the key features of co-design as they applied for First Nations partnership. These features were based on the three pre-existing ethical research and co-design frameworks I just touched on and each study was reviewed and then graded 0 to 3 for each of the criteria for a total max score of 12. We then re-reviewed the top three articles as a case study and this process was conducted through a strengths-based lens as a recommended approach among contemporary First Nations health literature. So our four coded rubric is First Nations self-determination, First Nations leadership and data sovereignty and impact in value for First Nations communities and sustainability and accountability through First Nations governance. So we'll just work through some of these. So the first one is First Nations self-determination. So really it's about giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the tools and resources they need to be as strong as they can in their own ways of knowing being and doing. So it's things like informed consent, making sure the partnerships are meaningful and equitable and authentic. There's also a key emphasis on cultural safety, responsiveness and learning. So at the centre of this I would say it's respect. Would you agree with me? Definitely and the word reciprocity comes up again in self-determination but also in empowering individuals and communities to take hold of the research and really promote the research themselves. One of the key principles of course of co-design is that it's not about the researcher owning the space. It's about the researcher promoting ownership of the research by the participants themselves and in that process the participant becomes a co-researcher and should be recognised throughout in that way. And those were some of the things that we really looked for in the research articles and I really like the acknowledgement of power differentials in this because if we start to elevate participants to co-researchers in their own research then you promote self-determination and you break down that power differential. And I'm glad you said that, our word that I can't pronounce because that is essential to it. Our next criterion was First Nations leadership and data sovereignty and it is about as the title suggests leading by First Nations people in research spaces. So this is the research with and by rather than on, so in our partnership we are as I said three Aboriginal researchers. So this is a prime example of First Nations leadership. It's also about making sure that people who are non-Indigenous or in positions of power are relinquishing power and accepting of experience and expertise. So this is really about the power dynamic. Yeah and one of the things Gilly at the moment is that there's a real strong emphasis on data sovereignty at the moment and who owns the data and where it's going and what's happening with it. So obviously in the articles that we've reviewed we really wanted to look for the emphasis on the participants or the co-researchers owning their own data and being able to navigate that space with their own data in hand. Yeah which links back into the self-determination. So they're all very closely related and interrelated so it was difficult to split into four but we've done a good effort. So the next criteria is about impact and value which is outlined in these five points are really just making sure the research is benefiting the community that it's happening with. It's also about the strength that partnership can promote and contribute to impact and value. And you'll notice Gilly that many of these sort of assessment criteria relate very closely to the IATSIS guidelines and what we thought is instead of reworking them or reidentifying them or redefining them is that instead we would work with what was out there in terms of ethical research we would combine it with some of the co-design research of good examples and at the end of the day we should come up with some sort of best practice for co-design. So it's only slightly nuanced the IATSIS guidelines but I think with a flavor of co-design run through the guidelines, the ethical guidelines that you can actually start to see some veins of authenticity and co-design coming through the research. Thank you Gilly. Yeah no it is definitely a mixture of all three and others so it's definitely not brand new but it is nuanced. The last criteria and I'll just bounce on it quickly for the interest of time is sustainability and accountability. So it's things like recognizing the holistic nature of health in First Nations culture and making sure the government is strong with ongoing reporting and dialogue. It's also things simple like ground rules but most of these features we'll talk through when we're talking about our partnership. So on time results we had across five databases 492 records identified which was a terrifying number for me who I've never done a systematic review before but it was quite manageable by the time we got down to the inclusion so we ended up in a leading study and they were assessed for eligibility and then included in the review. So this is our Prisma flowchart which I think is quite quite exciting but onto more important things. We've then ranked the articles by their grades for each of the four criterion for a max total score of 12 and then that quantitative data was translated into qualitative data and as you can see in the right hand column it studies of low moderate and high quality and there was quite a diverse mix seven were high quality four moderate and four low. So then in our discussion of our article we chose the top score methodology so all scores of 12 just have as a case study analysis. These studies are shining examples of how to work with and for First Nations communities. Now we could go through our analyses of all of these with you now but this wouldn't leave much of a surprise for our article more over the key features of these co-design methodologies are reflected in our partnership that is the partnership between Key and I on the project and given the topic of this conference reimagining student possibility and responsibility we thought that analysis of our partnership of the possibility and responsibility I have in this project as a student would be more effective. All right so on to our first category which was a criterion it's First Nations self-determination so for us things like yarning it's preferred method of communication everything's really casual and informal while still getting the things done so we didn't have an agenda set we knew the kind of things you want to talk about and obviously our voices are central and voluntary I was not just informed in voluntary consent but I was very excited to be a part of the project and we're learning from each other attributing values experiences there's also the mutual respect and joint decision-making processes and relationships are built on trust and maintained. We've also employed a horizontal partnership while acknowledging there's still going to be power differentials because of the position of power our staff member has over a student and then we have leadership and data sovereignty so as I've said before we're First Nations authors and our other authors are First Nations or the fourth author have an editing role to leverage the expertise there's also the joint ownership of decisions and I was encouraged really early on to make final decisions which was quite refreshing. Keen was very respectful and responsive to the skills and attributes I brought to the team which emphasizes the trust that's needed in a relationship with First Nations people and communities. Keen also relinquished power and I was put as the first author which was pretty exciting and I as I said am able to make final decisions and redirect the research as interested. We also had a flexible working arrangement to suit both our needs and responsibilities for both of us time for family and selves was and so is important so this was something we favored. Impact and value so normally the research would be for the community but in the partnership I wanted to have a look at it in the sense of what I gained so I have had enhanced research skills experience writing and publishing systematic reviews and access to great other opportunities so I've gone on to work and I think three different projects Keen now and they're still in the running that's very exciting. We've also had frequent meetings to catch up and check in with ongoing dialogue and transparency so that's about measuring the impact and value and we've also been reporting experiences to the UQ research forum and events through written statements and experience etc so this is making sure that the funding that UQ is giving us to work is actually producing impact and value and for any research with First Nations communities it's critical that you are measuring the impact and value because it's easy enough to say you're achieving things but to really show it is another. I'll just jump to the next one quickly. On this last one is about sustainability so the relationship to ground and trust and shared responsibility and that word that I can't pronounce and the ground rules and roles are established so I think the sustainability is well demonstrated in the fact that we've gone on to do three other projects even though it's such a short time frame and it's a place where we can both enhance our skills and learn from each other which is central to true co-design. And Keely I'd also like to say that you have as you alluded to gone on for more paid employment not just in my research area but in other research areas with similar skill sets so I think it's led to further employment opportunities for Keely and an opportunity to see her career progress not just as a student but as a as an academic or as a researcher or within whichever capacity. But I think one of the great things for for Keely is we both set high expectations of each other and so Keely was expecting me to bring my best game and I was expecting Keely to bring her best game as well and from my point of view she did that and she engaged fully and and released herself to the opportunities and that early pivot in the project that was required. And then just to finish off because we're running on late our take home messages are the importance of reflexivity and research so that's a standpoint theory and the inside outsider theory so where you stand in relation to your work and how that influences and determines the way you work. Obviously the power of student voices in determining and influencing research and tertiary settings and the fact that we should be including and centering First Nations voices it's research for and by not on First Nations. And finally our point is that effective co-design leads to optimal outcomes for all in bowl. With Keen and I there was a student and staff partnership that co-design is effective with researchers and community and is something we should all be looking towards and that comes to the conclusion so thank you everyone for listening in. Thank you, thanks Keely. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you so much to you both. Does anyone have a question for Keen and Keely? Really quickly I just was wondering if you were able or in a position to I guess give advice to somebody who hasn't approached this area before what would you kind of say to somebody who is about to partner partnership like this and you know do you have any sort of messages like yes or like scalability even you know like bring more students in or you know growing it as a practice. Would you like me to talk on that Keely? Sure. So from my perspective obviously I saw it initially as an opportunity to get a young Aboriginal candidate involved in some research and provide some upskilling. I've had a bit of experience I like it like in that very similar to maybe an honours project or something like that and understanding that the level of research is going to be at about an honours level if you if you can get the right person. So that's how I built the framework around it from my previous supervision experience in honours but what I quickly found with Keely is her capacity to do research is far beyond what an honours student is capable of and so for me much of the time I felt like I was holding her back and and she was just brilliant but how I would approach this is really trying to capture the imagination so for example we we are definitely planning on taking Keely to Yarraba just so that she can meet community and see the community co-design in action and I think that's a big big plus for the program is being able to provide not just a zoom experience but something that is tangible that that's from my perspective.