Contemporary Indigenous Health and Wellbeing

Running head: CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Name of the Student
Name of the Employee
Author’s Note

1CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Indigenous Australians that includes Australians of Aboriginal origin and Torres Strait
Islander are victims of social discrimination and lack of governmental support which has
imposed negative impact on their economic, academic and health development. This essay is
about the impact of Close the gap policy on the health status and longevity of the indigenous
Australians. This essay also discuss the impact of CTG policy on Judy, a 57 years old Aboriginal
Australian.
Closing The Gap (CTG) policy is a strategy taken by the Council of Australian
Governments (COAG) in March 2008 that includes the leaders of state, federal and territory
along with local governments, which involves closing the gaps in health equality and life
expectancy between Torres Strait Islander, Aboriginal Australians and the non-Indigenous
Australians within 25 years (Ackehurst et al. 2017). The policy is targeted to Torres Strait
Islander and Aboriginal people who comprise more than two and a half percent of the total
population of Australia. According to estimation, 90 percent of the targeted population is of
aboriginal origin while 6 percent are of Torres Strait Islander origin and 4 percent are of both
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Origin (Taylor and Guerin 2010). In order to monitor the
changes, COAG has set certain measureable targets that includes eliminate the differences in life
expectancy within a generation, to decrease the mortality rates by half and ensure early
childhood education access of indigenous children below the age of five, within a decade and
within 5 years respectively (The REM Framework 2016). The policy also targets to half the gap
in academic activities, year 12 attainment and equivalent attainment rates for indigenous students
by 2020 (Bainbridge et al. 2015). It also ensures decrease the gap by half in employment
outcomes within a decade. Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait islander, through decades,
were subjected to imposition of oppressive legislation. Hence this policy was enacted to prevent

2CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND WELLBEING
oppression by enforcing equality between indigenous and non indigenous Australians. According
to the report of COAG Reform Council, good progress has been done on three targets namely,
early childhood education, child mortality rates and year 12 or equivalent attainment whereas, no
significant improvement has been reported in health statics, academic achievement and
employment outcomes of Indigenous Aboriginal Australians (Taylor, Kickett and Jones 2014).
Despite the fact that expectation from the CTG policy was high, according to the latest Prime
minister report 2017, the results CTG is still below expectations on most fields, especially health
(Core Issues and Organisation Lecture 2017). The report stated that Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people are still the least healthy sub-population of Australia. Several limitations of the
CTG policy can be considered as the reason behind the laxity of the policy. One of the major
limitations of CTG is the lack of regular engagement and communication of the disability service
providers with the aboriginal community due to which unsatisfactory health care services are
experienced by the later (Reeve et al. 2015). Considering the fact that development of health is
directly dependant on economic development, lack of attention of the government on the
economic development of the Aboriginal community can be considered as another reason behind
the partial failure of the policy (Lip and Scheme 2016).
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a long term metabolic disorder which is identified by high
blood sugar level, insulin resistance and lack of insulin (Sherwood 2013). Common symptoms of
the disease include frequent thrust and urination and often unexplained weight loss. As in the
case of Judy, diabetes can also causes leg ulcer since highly fluctuating blood sugar level can
convert even a mild injury in leg to leg cancer. The physical impact of the leg ulcer caused due to
Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) on Judy involves severe pain resulting in sleepless nights
along with swelling, malodor and discharge. Due to T2DM, Judy is also having frequent urge for