Disease burden in Australia (indigenous and non-indigenous) 5 Comparison of the United States (indigenous and non-indigenous) 5 Disease burden in the University Name of the Author Name

Running head: EPIDEMIOLOGY
COMPARE AND CONTRAST DISEASE BURDEN
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note
Table of Content

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s
Part A...............................................................................................................................................3
Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
Australian Health Priority Area...................................................................................................3
Literature analysis........................................................................................................................4
Disease burden in Australia (indigenous and non-indigenous)...................................................5
Disease burden in the United States (indigenous and non-indigenous)......................................5
Comparison of burden in both the countries................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................8
Part B...............................................................................................................................................8
Introduction..................................................................................................................................8
Area of the highest prevalence....................................................................................................9
Strategy to reduce the prevalence..............................................................................................11
Aim of the strategy................................................................................................................11
Focus group...........................................................................................................................11
Strategy..................................................................................................................................11
Collaboration.........................................................................................................................12
Sustainability.........................................................................................................................13
Capacity building...................................................................................................................13
Relation of the strategy to health-specific determinants............................................................14

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Conclusion.................................................................................................................................14
References......................................................................................................................................16

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This paper will be divided into two parts. The first part will discuss the prevalence of one
of the Australian Nine health priorities areas and its burden in a comparison country. The next
part will discuss a novel strategy plan to help the selected population to recover from the
diseased condition. This paper will focus on the difference between the indigenous and non-
indigenous population based on diabetes as the chosen health priority area.
Part A
Introduction
DM (Diabetes mellitus) is primarily known as diabetes which is a group of metabolic
health disorders associated with a high sugar level of blood over a long time period. This disease
has been found to be referred to as a disease group that affects the way in which the human body
uses glucose (blood sugar) (Asmat, Abad & Ismail, 2016). Diabetes has also been found to
contribute very little to the rates of mortality among the people who are under the age of 55 years
and has been found to contribute less to the prevalence of diabetes. According to various pieces
of literature, it can be stated that Pimas are associated with the HLA-A2 phenotype and two
genetic markers on chromosome 4q and 7q which are linked to insulin resistance. No matter
what type of diabetes occurs in an individual, it will lead to the presence of excess sugar in their
blood. According to the statistical reports it can be stated that around 1.7 million people in
Australia have diabetes today. This calculation includes all the diagnosis types including 1.2
million as registered diabetes patients and 500,000 as undiagnosed type 2 diabetes patients
(Zimmet et al., 2016). This section will discuss the difference between diabetes prevalence
among the indigenous and non-indigenous people of Australia compared to the indigenous and
non-indigenous groups of the United States (US). This part will focus on the collection of data

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through a literature analysis process in order to analyze the comparison between the before stated
conditions.
Australian Health Priority Area
There are nine Australian Health priority areas. The national health priority areas
(NHPAs) were established in response to the WHO (World Health Organisation's) Global Health
Strategy for all from the year 2000 (Lazzarini et al., 2018). This framework focused on the health
policy and public attention on various areas that were considered to significantly contribute to
the disease burden in Australia. By the burden of a disease, it can be stated that it is a way to
measure the disease's impact on population injuries and death. The nine health priority regions of
Australia includes cancer control, cardiovascular health, prevention of injury and control, mental
health (1996), Diabetes mellitus (1997), Asthma (1999), Arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions
(2002), obesity and dementia (2008) and (2012) respectively (Kapp & Santamaria, 2015). The
national strategic framework associated with chronic conditions has been found to be associated
with the current document policy on chronic diseases in 2017. This policy has been found to
migrate to a disease-specific focus and provides guidance to the national response delivery and
health systems that respond in a more effective way. This paper will select Diabetes as a health
priority from 9 NHPAs in order to do the comparison study.
Literature analysis
According to Keel et al., (2017), the prevalence of self-reported diabetes among the
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian population varied to a high extent. The overall
prevalence of self-reported diabetes was reported to be very high and it was calculated to be four
times higher than among the Indigenous Australians. The rapidly increasing prevalence

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percentage has been found to be indicated by the NHS (National Health Survey). The authors
found that the likely risk factors of diabetes were associated with an increase in age, obesity, and
growth of the population (Ashby-Mitchell et al., 2017). From the general population, it has been
observed that the Indigenous Australian population who are living in the remote regions, has
been found to have a high diabetes prevalence in the communities with a 10 fold higher value
than the general population. The prevalence associated with the age adjustments for the self-
reported diabetes cases for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from Australia has been
found to be 44% and 12% respectively (Simmons et al, 2019). Reasons for these values or a high
prevalence among the indigenous Australians will be discussed in detail in the following
sections.
Disease burden in Australia (indigenous and non-indigenous)
Various pieces of the literature showed that Indigenous Australians are always at a higher
diabetes risk than the non-indigenous population. In Australia, it has been observed that the
increasing number of Australians who are affected by diabetes type 2 is driven by the highly
increasing obesity rate and the decreased physical activity associated with the dietary changes.
There is also an increasingly aging population in the Indigenous population group that leads to
an increase in the rate of diabetes occurrence among the indigenous population (Huo et al.,
2016). However, there is still the absence of direct pieces of evidence for the Aboriginal people
having diabetes and other health conditions, which are affected by the blood vessel, and disease-
associated disorders for people living a traditional lifestyle. However, it has been observed that
very few Aboriginal people have been living with a traditional lifestyle. Most of them have
shifted to a Westernised lifestyle which involves the presence of food rich in fat and sugar, low
in fiber, high alcohol intake among young adults, smoking cigarettes and living a sedentary