CANBERRA’S NBA champion and four-time Olympian Patty Mills is using his passion for basketball to improve health outcomes for the next generation of indigenous players.

Indigenous Basketball Australia (IBA) is a not-for-profit founded by Mills and his parents Uncle Benny and Aunty Yvonne Mills to deliver grassroots basketball programs and give back to community.

IBA recently partnered with the University of Queensland to boost sporting, education and culture pathways for First Nations children and young people.

Benny Mills is a Naghiralgal, Meriam and Daureb man and the director of IBA and said their programs were different from other basketball or sports programs because they were built on culture.

“The whole environment that we’ve created with Indigenous Basketball Australia is that it’s a safe environment for young people to come and be themselves,” Mr Mills said.

“You see smiles when they walk into the stadium and look around and there’s people there like them, which is unique.”

Keane Wheeler, a Ngarabal man from UQ’s School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, said there was a need to provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people with a diverse range of visible and highly impactful role models.

“A range of different successors will enable children and young people to better articulate how our mob fits into wider society and to better understand what success looks like in its many forms,” Dr Wheeler said.

The partnership between IBA and UQ includes a range of programs around social and emotional wellbeing that Patty Mills said would make a welcome addition to their offerings.

“This collaboration will allow us to go beyond the court by encouraging our young people to embrace their culture, unlock their full potential and provide them with the best possible chance to succeed,” he said.