Koolin Balit - Policy Analysis

Running head: KOOLIN BALIT – POLICY ANALYSIS
KOOLIN BALIT – POLICY ANALYSIS
Name of the student:
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KOOLIN BALIT – POLICY ANALYSIS
Introduction:
Koolin Balit: Victorian Government strategic directions for Aboriginal health 2012–2022
would be analyzed in order to understand how effective the strategies are addressing the
healthcare needs and requirements of the aboriginals of Victoria. This assignment would have an
overall discussion of the vision and key priorities of the plan (Helson et al., 2017). This would be
followed by description of the priority area of “addressing risk factors” along with the two at risk
population of “adolescents” and “older cohorts”. This would be followed three relevant social
determinants of health like “socioeconomic status”, “poor health literacy” and “culturally
incompetent care services” which when managed successfully can help in addressing the risk
factors successfully.
Overall description:
Koolin Balit meaning “healthy people” is the name given to the strategic plan developed
by the Department of Health of the Victorian government in collaboration with that of the
aboriginal communities, other parts of the government as well as with service providers. They
have committed to the improvement of aboriginal Health by developing a vision and aiming to
make significant as well as measurable impacts on the improvement of the quality and length of
lives of Aboriginal people living in Victoria (McKenna et al., 2015). These strategies were
developed for three important objectives like closing the gap in life expectancy of the
Aboriginals of Victoria, reduction in the differences in the number of infant mortality rates, low
birth weights as well as morbidity between indigenous and non-indigenous people and
improvement in access towards services and outcomes for the indigenous people of this region.
As a result, six important facts priority areas had been selected like that healthy start towards life,

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KOOLIN BALIT – POLICY ANALYSIS
developing a healthy childhood, healthier transition to adulthood, effective care for older cohorts,
addressing of the risk factors and even managing illness with appropriate services. A wide
variety of social determinists of health like socio-economic background and many environmental
factors play major roles in determining the quality of lives of people (Jatkar et al., 2017).
Moreover, poor healthcare services which are culturally not competent to meet the needs of
aboriginal people are avoided by people (Genat et al., 2017). Therefore, developing proper
healthcare services that ensure effectiveness, coordination, responsiveness and accessibility to
aboriginals’ healthcare needs is one important motive of the Koolin Balit program as well.
Description of one priority areas and two at-risk groups:
One of the most important priority areas that is covered in the Koolin Balit policy is
effectively addressing the risk factors that are resulting in increase in the burden of the health
disorders among the aboriginals. Policy makers and researchers have well identified the main
risks factors like lifestyle factors such as tobacco smoking, poor unhealthy diets, sedentary
lifestyles, alcohol consumptions, illicit drug use, and unsafe sex as some of the main actions that
contribute to increased disease burden (Kingsley et al., 2018). This can be explained with the
help of an example. Tobacco smoking has acted as a risk factor that had contributed to about
12% of the total disorder burden and 20% of all deaths in the nation. As the data obtained in the
year 2013, it has been seen that the smoking rates of aboriginals in Victoria was 33% in
comparison to that of 19% to that of the non-indigenous people.
Another risk factor is the unhealthy lifestyles of consuming poor unhealthy diet and lack
of physical exercises. Obesity is considered to be the risk factor for various kinds of disorders