Close the Gap and Closing the Gap Campaigns: A Case Study on Indigenous Health

Running head: ASSIGNMENT TOPIC A
ASSIGNMENT TOPIC A
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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ASSIGNMENT TOPIC A
Introduction:
The indigenous communities suffer from poorer quality health than the non-indigenous
people. This reflects the health gap existing between the two cohorts for which campaigns like
the Close the Gap and Closing the Gap had been established (Altman et al., 2018). This
assignment discusses of a patient named Matt who is indigenous in origin and is presently
receiving care form a healthcare organization in Brisbane. His family is receiving benefits in the
healthcare services that are helping them to carry on with the treatments. This assignment would
discuss in details about the campaigns and their success rates. It would also discuss the roles of
two prominent professionals like patient escorts as well as the Aboriginal Hospital Liaison
Officers (AHLOs) who helped in the treatment of Matt as well.
Discussion:
The two similarly titled program namely Close the Gap as well as closing the Gap have
different types of approaches. The former can be found to be a public awareness program with its
focus on the closing the health gap that exist between the Indigenous people and non-indigenous
people. Different types of NGO, indigenous health bodies and human rights organizations
including that of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) collaboratively work
together to run the campaign. Dr Tom Calma who is actually the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander social justice commissioner had released the social justice report which had shown the
worsening results of the health gap as well as the lack of opportunities and resources existing
between the two cohorts and following this, the campaign was launched in the year 2007
(Gannon, 2018). It was found that this campaign got its support from both the deferral as well as
the state government. The campaign had the aim of achieving the health equality within the

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ASSIGNMENT TOPIC A
generation and even aimed for reducing the gap in mortality of children under the age of 5 and
for that the COAG also called the Council of Australian Governments had set two significant
goals with six important targets in 2008. Kevin Rudd who was the then Prime minister along
with the leader of the opposition party called Brendon Nelson supported the entire program and
thereby they were found to sign the statement of intent for the program (Cashman et al., 2016).
The Closing the Gap program followed shortly as the governmental initiative to respond to the
urgent situation of the increasing health gap and social injustice faced by the people of the native
community. This was mainly the initiative of COAG based on the indigenous inequality and was
based on Indigenous Reform Agreement. A number of policies, programs and initiatives were
developed by the government with the commitment towards closing the gap with specific
timeframes. Seven national targets were set by them that covered various domains like
education, health, employment and many others. The different targets that had been set are
halving the rate of mortality for children under the age of 5, mitigating that gap in the life
expectancy, ensuring access of all children of the indigenous communities of those mainly of the
four years, halving the gap in numeracy achievements in children as well as reducing the gap by
half in reading (Johnson et al., 2019). Others were the halving of the gap in the Indigenous Year
12by the year of 2020, halving the gap in employment opportunities and similar others.
Evidences that have tried to review and analyze the spending structure of the Australian
Government have witnessed that on an average level, $2 is spent per capita to that of the native
people in comparison to that of $1 spent per capita on the rest of the population mainly the non-
native people. It had to be remembered by the criticizing group that the burden of the healthcare
issues and chronic disorders are also higher among the native communities accounting for about
2.3 greater than the rate of the non-native people. However, an interest but conflicting scenario is