Evaluation of a hepatitis C health promotion campaign co-designed for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations

From 2022, Burnet Institute has been collaborating closely with a network of national partners from the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health sector to design, implement and evaluate a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander hepatitis C health promotion campaignm 'Every Yarn Counts: Live free of hep C'.

Nine Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) are implementing the campaign over three months, with campaign activities aiming to normalise discussions about hepatitis C in the community. This includes eliminating barriers, stigma and misconceptions associated with the disease to encourage people to get tested and treated.  

The evaluation of the campaign will use a range of quantitative and qualitative data sources to address 4 main aims:  

1. To evaluate the outcomes of Every Yarn Counts, particularly those related to awareness of the campaign and response to campaign messages among clients of ACCHOs, and the numbers of people accessing testing and treatment for hepatitis C through implementing organisations. 
2. To evaluate the experiences and implementation requirements for staff responsible for delivering the campaign, to assess the feasibility for implementing similar campaigns in other settings. 
3. To evaluate the co-design process, with a particular focus on the methods and experience of conducting co-design in a fully online environment. 
4. To understand how the development and implementation of future hepatitis C health promotion campaigns aimed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people might be improved.  

The project will allow students to:  

• work with a multidisciplinary team of researchers and experts in epidemiology, health promotion, co-design, and Aboriginal health
• learn and apply mixed methods evaluation skills
• develop your own research questions with available data (or work with some of our pre-existing questions).