Indigenous Healthcare Services

Running head: INDEGENOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES
INDEGENOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:
1.Introduction:

1
INDEGENOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES
Aboriginal community controlled health care services can be explained
as the healthcare services that are developed keeping in mind the interests
of the aboriginal community within a particular region and adheres to their
healthcare needs. These are mainly developed for and by aboriginal
communities to overcome the health status gap that exists between
indigenous and non-indigenous people. The ongoing crisis in the indigenous
health is mainly because of the generations of neglect as well as lack of the
cohesive public policy and also failures in providing sufficient resources
ensuring that they all reach the people in the ground (Shipp & Gregson,
2015). Despite suffering from much worse health conditions than that of the
non-natives, indigenous people have less access to healthcare services.
Moreover cultural incompetency by western healthcare professionals also
acts as another external driver for creation of these services. This
assignment will describe the service profile of one such organization called
the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service. It will discuss the external factors
that had resulted in creation of this service and would also shed light on the
services provided by this organization.
2.1. Description of the profile of the health service:
The Victorian Aboriginal Health Service also called as the VAHs had
been established in the year 1973. This service organization was mainly
developed for addressing the various specific medical needs of the
indigenous communities residing in Victoria. This organization had had
expanded steadily over the last 40 years (VAHS, 2018). It has been found to
provide extensive and comprehensive ranges of dental, medical as well as
social services for the aboriginal communities. Another very interesting
aspect that had been found to be associated with this organization is that
besides healthcare services, they also ensure the well-being of the
organization through different types of contributions to various community
events as well as activities (Silbum et al., 2016). Moreover, it is also seen to
focus on the researches about the ongoing needs of the community and

2
INDEGENOUS HEALTHCARE SERVICES
contribute to community empowerment in every ways possible through new
strategy development to meet the needs of the community.
2.2. External factors that help in influencing the healthcare services:
The Victorian Aboriginal Health Service also called as the VAHs was
established in the early of 1970s by a group of leaders in the region of the
Fitzroy, Melbourne. The main external drivers that had mainly influenced in
the establishment of the organization is poverty as well as the injustices
faced by the aboriginal communities in the hands of the non-indigenous
people in the nation. Reports of high mortality rates along with the increased
burden of the disorders among the aboriginal communities as well as the ill
health of the people had surfaced in the nation which had made the
aboriginal leaders to concentrate on saving their races from the oppression
and helping the people in their communities to live safe and better quality
lives (Shipp & Gregson, 2015). These conditions of the people of the
aboriginal communities can be attributed to the governmental policies which
had restricted the access of the Aboriginal people to the various essential
health services. Another important contributor to the development of the
necessity to establish aboriginal health service was the poor quality care
service they were receiving from the mainstream health care services of the
nation. The view of “whole of life” approach towards life of the native people
was not taken into consideration by the western healthcare services. The
Aboriginals put a lot of significance into the SEWB concept called the social
and emotional well-being of the people to help them live better quality lives
(Isaacs et al., 2017). However, the western healthcare services were
following the biomedical model of care only focusing on the biological causes
of ailments. This resulted in dissatisfaction among Aboriginals. It has been
also found that cultural biasness and discrimination and stigmatization
among the western healthcare professionals affected the self-respect and
self-esteem of the communities. Hence, there was urgency in developing
healthcare services which would align with the cultural traditions and