Culturally safe, trauma-aware, healing-informed care is critical to achieving equitable outcomes and ensuring cancer care and support delivered to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is free of individual and institutional racism and discrimination, promotes their right to self-determination, and is respectful of cultural customs and traditions. Service providers, government organisations, and regulatory authorities all have a responsibility to ensure the cultural safety of cancer programs, services, and policies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In delivering this action, collaboration between these stakeholders and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cancer workforce will ensure approaches are evidence-based, evaluated, and meet national standards for cultural safety.

This may include:

• strengthening the understanding of the cancer workforce on national standards for the provision of culturally safe cancer care to maintain compliance, particularly among non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals
• establishing a national approach to accountability and monitoring of culturally safe care and compliance with national standards that incorporates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patient reported outcome and experience measures
• liaising with regulatory authorities, such as the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Authority, and health professional bodies to take action to monitor adherence to standards on culturally safe, trauma-aware, healing-informed care nationwide
• aligning to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Cultural safety in health care for Indigenous Australians: Monitoring Framework [162] to continually measure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consumers’ experience of care and progress towards improving cultural safety in the Australian health system
• partnering with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professional representative bodies to enable ongoing monitoring and comprehensiveness of cultural safety standards nationally.

The implementation of this action should align to and strengthen existing cultural safety frameworks developed by states and territories, such as the Victorian Government Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Safety Framework[163] as well as national frameworks, such as the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers Association's Cultural Safety Framework[164] and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cancer Framework.[108]

This action could also consider policy and/or legislative requirements of cultural safety and how compliance could be promoted through education and training, including strategies outlined in Action 5.5.3 Routinely integrate cultural safety training programs for cancer service providers, including through community-based partnerships with priority population groups.