Barriers to Access to Healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders People

Running head: PROGRAM PLAN AND EVALUATION IN PUBLIC HEALTH 1
Barriers to Access to Healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders People
(Student’s name)
(Institutional Affiliation)

PROGRAM PLAN AND EVALUATION IN PUBLIC HEALH 2
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction...........................................................................................................................3
2.0 Background...........................................................................................................................3
2.1 Rationale of the study............................................................................................................5
3.0 Community Needs Assessment............................................................................................5
3.1 Population and Community Profile.......................................................................................6
3.2 Stakeholders...........................................................................................................................7
3.3 Identified Key issues..............................................................................................................8
3.4 Prioritization of major key issues..........................................................................................9
4.0 Program and action Plan.....................................................................................................10
5.0 Discussion...........................................................................................................................11
6.0 Recommendations...............................................................................................................12
7.0 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................12

PROGRAM PLAN AND EVALUATION IN PUBLIC HEALH 3
1.0 Introduction
Most of the current studies in Australia have focused on how to improve the life expectancy
and health of indigenous Australians. Like any other colonized population, comparing with the
non-indigenous population, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have inadequate
access to health (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016). According to the Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2015, the gap in life expectancy between Aboriginal and
Non-indigenous Australian is 9.5 years for males and 7.6 years for females. This might due to
the fact that, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander often faced by difficulties to access adequate
primary health care services(Al-Yaman, 2017b). Accessibility to proper health care requires
more than just providing services that within easy reach. Ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islanders maintain appropriate access to health care can be complex since they are always
faced with vast difficulties and additional barriers such as racism, discrimination, poor social-
economic status, culture and lack of enough government support(Australian Institute of Health
and Welfare, 2018). A major challenge that often contribute to poor access to health care for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is inequality(Munns et al., 2018). The major disparity that
demonstrates inequality between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is shown in two major
healthcare sections which include access to primary health care and health infrastructure(NSW
Ministry of Health, 2013). This study aims to demonstrate the level of accesses to health care for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. In addition, the study seeks to show different barriers of
health for the indigenous population, community needs assessment, strategies that can be put into
action to improve the accesses of health care and provide recommendations.

PROGRAM PLAN AND EVALUATION IN PUBLIC HEALH 4
2.0 Background
Access to healthcare and services is a significant determinant on the health quality of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Access is usually evaluated by monitoring the
use of health services and through factors such as waiting times for care. (MacPhail & McKay,
2018) In addition, the evaluation of adequate access can also be determined needs of care since
individuals with more health care needs normally access more health services than those with
fewer needs(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 2016). In Australia, health
care’s services are delivered to people through various means. These include the preventive
health services which encompass screening and immunization programs, hospital care including
both inpatient and outpatient services and primary and community health services(Smylie &
Firestone, 2016). There the major broad streams of health care delivery also provide specialized
care including drugs and alcohol treatment, mental illness, and hearing services.
Measuring access to health care is multidimensional in nature thus it is complex. Access is
evaluated using measures such as time of care, distance, financial aspects, social and cultural
aspects(Bailie et al., 2017). Health care services can be targeted to the specific communities such
as the Aboriginal people. About 75% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in
major cities where majority of health services are readily available(Australian Institute of Health
and Welfare, 2016). However, those services are not usually available for Indigenous population
due to various reasons such as geographic, cultural and social reasons(Australian Institute of
Health and Welfare (AIHW), 2016). Adequate acccess of primary health care is crucial for
everyone as it is usually the first personal contact with health care. Therefore, indigenous-
specific services are significathe nt in ensuring the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people
can easily access healthcare services.