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Article History

Received: 30 April 2020

Accepted: 19 November 2020

First Online: 4 December 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The study team sought human research ethical approval from all Australian jurisdictions - even though the annual reports were published and publicly accessible - due to the research focusing on one specific sector of the health system, that is the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations. The following provides each Ethics Committee’s determination, including those Committees that waived the need for ethics approval and why. Consent was in the form of opt-out with each organisation being provided the opportunity not participate and consent was implied by those organisations that provided their annual reports by the very act of doing so.The study was approved by the Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council Ethics Committee of New South Wales (Protocol number 1285/17) and the Menzies School of Health Research Human Research Ethics Committee (Protocol number HREC 2017–2862). The following committees waived the need for ethics approval due to the data being requested available in the public domain: University of Adelaide Human Research Ethics Committee (email confirmation received 10th February 2017); Aboriginal Health Research Ethics Committee (email confirmation received 9th February 2017; Central Australian Human Research Ethics Committee (email confirmation received 11th May 2017); St Vincent Hospital Melbourne (email confirmation received 30th May 2017); and Tasmania Social Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee (email confirmation received 27th November 2017). The study was carried out in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research [] and the principles of the South Australian Aboriginal Health Research Accord []. A letter from the Chief Investigator of the study was emailed to each ACCHO that had a publicly accessible report. This letter advised services of the nature of the study, the ethics approvals and waivers. They were invited to notify the research team if they did not want their published annual report to be included in the study. ACCHOs that provided the research team with their annual report because it was not publicly accessible, actively consented to their report being included in the study.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.