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'Access to health services is vital to the well-being of our communities and for future generations...’ 

Introduction

The Bila Muuji Aboriginal Health Services Incorporated comprises of AMS’s from Balranald, Brewarrina, Bourke, Coomealla, Coonamble, Dubbo, Orange, Wellington and Walgett and they are very active in trying to address the health inequality in their local communities. Their approach is to “provide not just the physical well-being of the individual but the social emotional and cultural well being of the whole community”.

The members of Bila Muuji are Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs), and they meet every second month.
Meetings are shared between Sydney and Dubbo due to the inability of the major funding agencies NSW Health and OATSIH to travel away regularly from their work base. The Sydney meetings are linked into occasions when the AHMRC hold their meetings to allow the regional Directors to attend both meetings, therefore saving on their time and travel away from their respective ACCHO.
The collegiate relationships as a member are valuable to share common concerns of business and also offering strength in numbers when lobbying for programs or submitting for a regional proposal. Members also offer advice to those communities wishing to establish an Aboriginal Health and/or Medical Service.

The Aboriginal Medical Services are non profit organisations and rely on public support from individuals, community groups, corporations, trusts and foundations as well as government funding to continue to improve the health and well being of their clients and the local communities. Take a moment and read about some of our client’s and how we have been able to assist them.

A History

A group of Aboriginal Medical Services (AMS) CEO’s in rural and remote NSW, felt that a regional body could identify and address shared issues impacting the health and social needs of Aboriginal communities and that a unified voice carried more weight than one voice in the wildness. Bila Muuji, meaning ‘river friends’ was formed in 1995 to be that voice.