The First National Aboriginal Health Workers Conference was organised by the Department of Health, Northern Territory, to enable Aboriginal health workers from all parts of Australia to meet and share ideas about their work, their training programs and those aspects of health which are of importance to Aboriginal people. A secondary function of the conference was to enable other people involved in the training and employment of health workers to attend the discussion sessions, largely as observers, and to exchange ideas on their own particular problems and progress. Concurrent sessions were arranged for this purpose.
A total of 140 delegates from all mainland States and the Northern Territory attended the conference which was held over three days from 10 to 12 October.