Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Essay 2022

Running head: INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Indigenous Health and Wellbeing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
A significant portion of the Australian population constitutes Aboriginals and Torres
Strait Islanders and is popularly known as indigenous population of Australia. At least
787,000 Australians are indigenous as per the 2016 statistics. Of them 7.7% resides in the
remote areas and 14% resides in the very remote areas. The percentages of indigenous
population residing in remote and very remote areas are the victim of health inequalities or
health disparities. In order to address this health inequality, “Closing the Gap” (CTG) policy
was implemented by Australian Government in the year 2008 (Australian Institute of Health
and Welfare 2018). The following essay is based on the case study of Judy, an Aboriginal
woman with diabetic foot ulcer. The essay will begin with brief description of CTG policy
followed by Judy’s social determinants of health (SDHs) and how it is being addressed by
CTG. The role of ALO, AMS and community health will also be highlighted at the end of the
essay.
CTG policy aims to reduce the health inequalities among the indigenous population in
Australia. The main aim of the policy is increase the life expectancy of the overall indigenous
population, decrease in rate of childhood mortality, increase access to education for the
children and improved employment outcomes (Australian Government 2019). The policy was
implemented during 2008 under the approval of two important stakeholder, Government of
Australia and indigenous people through signing of the Indigenous health quality summit of
intent. The timeline for achieving the proposed aim was 25 years. The need for the CTG
policy evolved from several reports of health inequalities among indigenous population
coming from national and international bodies. The reports of World Health Organization
[WHO] (2019) revealed that there is a significant health disparity between indigenous
populations in Australia than that of the non-indigenous population. Australian Bureau of
Statistics (2006) reported that average life-expectancy of indigenous people is 17 years less in
comparison to non-indigenous population. High rate of infant mortality, increase rate of

2INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
substance abuse, unhealthy yet unhygienic living conditions and high rate of occurrence of
non-communicable disease like diabetes and cardiovascular disease among the indigenous
population. On the basis of both national findings and internal criticism, the government of
Australia implemented CTG policy for its indigenous population. According to Young et al.
(2017) reduction in health disparity is important in any human race in order to up-help the
concept of comprehensive healthcare. According to Australian Parliament on behalf of Prime
minister (2019) post implementation of CTG, a significant improvement have recorded in
childhood mortality and education however, there is still a gap in achieving rest of the targets
proposed by CTG.
The long-term consequence of Judy’s health includes increase in severity of Type 2
Diabetes (T2DM), manifested by macro and microvascular complications (Zheng, Ley & Hu
2018).The SDH that is primarily responsible for Judy case is lack of health literacy. Proper
lifestyle interventions and periodic monitoring of blood glucose level (BGL) helps in
reducing the severity of T2DM however, not abiding the same leads to increase severity of
T2DM manifested by micro and macrovascular complications like in this case, it is diabetic
foot ulcer. The gap in health literacy is addressed in CTG under the aim of increased of life
expectancy of indigenous population. Amery (2017) stated that indigenous population suffers
from poor health literacy and thus lack the disease self-management skills. Arranging
community based health literacy program under the funding of CTG will help to increase the
level of health literacy and thus improving overall quality of self-care (Parliament of
Australia 2019). Judy has financial constrains as she is unemployed at present. She also has
no car of her own. Due to mobility issues she is unable to avail public transport in order to
avail healthcare service that is 10 kilo-meter away from her house. The SDH affected her is
lack of healthcare access. CTG addresses this concern by setting up local small health check-
up centres in order to conduct periodic assessment for the indigenous population (Parliament