The Rio Tinto Child Health Partnership helps give kids a healthy start in life.

Nothing is more important than the health and wellbeing of our children.

Or, as Professor Fiona Stanley AC, founding Director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and recipient of the Australian of the Year award for 2003, says, “we firmly believe that every child has the right to live a life free of pain, disease and disability, with the strength to enjoy all that life has to offer. This is the reality of our mission.”

The mission to which Professor Stanley refers is that of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Western Australia's only research institute investigating the causes and prevention of childhood illness, with a focus on improving health and wellbeing.

The Institute is recognised internationally for conducting groundbreaking, multidisciplinary research and is one with which Rio Tinto is proud to be partnered in the area of delivering improvements to the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

“Aboriginal parents, like all parents, want the best for their children,” says Associate Professor Colleen Hayward who heads the Telethon Institute’s Indigenous study group, the Kulunga Research Network, and who also manages Rio Tinto’s Child Health Partnership.

Under Colleen’s management both the Kulunga Research Network and the Child Health Partnership have been involved in the largest survey ever undertaken of Aboriginal children and families.

Nothing is more important than the health
and wellbeing of children.

Now running to four volumes and well over 2,000 pages, the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey has analysed data from more than 5,000 children in 2,000 families across Western Australia.

The first two volumes dealt with the health and the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people, while the third looked into improving their educational experience.

The fourth volume, launched in November 2006, broadens out into “Strengthening the Capacity of Aboriginal Children, Families and Communities”.

Many of these communities are in remote parts of Western Australia and often in areas where Rio Tinto operates – which is one of the reasons why Rio Tinto is so strongly committed to the Child Health Partnership.

As one of the volumes in the survey states: “Aboriginal child health is inextricably tied to processes of human development and growth. Relevant and achievable Aboriginal child health policies demand understanding and commitment to this.”