Oral microbiome research - working in partnership with Indigenous Australian communities

Microbiome research is currently biased towards populations of European descent, with such populations providing a weak basis upon which to understand microbiome-health relationships in under-studied populations, many of whom carry the highest burdens of disease. Most oral microbiome studies to date have been undertaken in industrialized countries. Research involving marginalised populations should be shaped by a number of guiding principles. In the Indigenous Australian context, one useful framework is the Consolidated Criteria for Strengthening Reporting of Health Research involving Indigenous Peoples (CONSIDER) statement. This paper describes how the microbiome research field is having impacts in the Indigenous Australian health space, and describes a particular project involving Indigenous Australians in which the CONSIDER statement is used as the underlying framework.