Closing the Gap Policy | Report

CLOSING THE GAP POLICY 1
CLOSING THE GAP POLICY
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CLOSING THE GAP POLICY 2
Closing the Gap Policy
Introduction
Inequality on matters health has been major problem among the Indigenous people in
Australia until Closing the Gap (CTG) policy was implemented. This policy was implemented
with the aim of promoting the health status of indigenous people in Australia. Before its
implementation, the health status gap between the non-indigenous and the indigenous people had
widened at an unacceptable rate (Wang, 2016, p.5). Some of the important determinants of health
among the indigenous people which portrayed inequality included low-quality health care
infrastructure and the lack of access to health care services among the indigenous communities.
Using the case study of Judy, this paper will scrutinize and analyze CTG policy in regard to its
impacts on the indigenous people and a solution to health inequalities experienced by the
indigenous people.
CTG policy can be seen as a government strategy whose main aim was to take care of the
disadvantaged population in Australia as far as health matters were concerned. The policy was
formulated to take of the indigenous people with respect to life expectancy, access to childhood
education, child mortality, employment outcomes and educational achievement (Hunter and Yap,
2018). The policy was to act as a government’s commitment to ensure there is equality among
the indigenous people on matters health (Jordan, 2018). This policy was a response to social
justice report which had been drafted earlier before Close the Gap social justice campaign. Later
on, both the government and indigenous people entered into an agreement to work together
towards equality in health status.

CLOSING THE GAP POLICY 3
Historically, CTG policy can be traced back in the year 2005 when the then indigenous
Social Justice Commissioner drafted a report entitled “social justice report”. This report required
the government of Australia to commit itself to achieve healthcare equality among the
indigenous people in the next 25 years. According to the report, they had been neglected for long
leading to poor health status, increased mortality rates and reduced life expectancy (Giles-Corti
et al, 2015, p.235). This draft report was followed by the Close the Gap campaign, a social
justice campaign which addressed health inequality for the indigenous people by 2030. This
campaign had been launched as a National Indigenous Health Equality Campaign in the year
2006 by a number of organizations including the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organization, the
Australian Indigenous Doctor’s Association and the Indigenous Dentists’ Association of
Australia among others (Kowal, 2015, p.183).
Close the Gap campaign acted as the “public face” of the NIHE Campaign which was
formally launched in 2007 through the steering committee comprising of NACCHO, ANTaR and
the Oxfam Australia. Later on, the National Indigenous Health Equality Summit was held in
2008 where Close the Gap Indigenous health equality targets were presented to the delegates and
a statement of intent signed. The statement of intent stipulated how the government and the
Indigenous people would work together to achieve health status equality and improve the life
expectancy (Browne et al, 2017, p.10). Since 2008, this policy has continued to improve through
policy reforms to realize the full transition from inequality healthcare to equality healthcare.
Although not much has been achieved from the time CTG policy was implemented, there
is some notable progress. For instance, some of the disadvantages which faced the Indigenous
people in regard to child education, life expectancy, child mortality, and health have reduced.