Closing the Gap Program and its Impact on Indigenous Health Outcomes

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Introduction
The closing the gap program necessitates people to raise insights from a focus on deficits
and issues to actively realizing and supporting the full engagement of the aboriginal people in the
economic along with social life of the country. The essay explains what the policy is, its
relevance on the health results of the indigenous Australians along with challenges which might
have impacted their change. Moreover, it analyses the possible long term consequences of
diabetes to social health determinants, the advantage of being registered on the program, the
responsibilities of Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) together with Aboriginal Liaison Officer
(ALO) and the services they deliver. Lastly, the essay states the connection between the AMS,
ALO and community health centres.
Body
Closing the gap is a governmental program with the target of improving Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander individuals’ lives by minimizing disadvantage among the people. This is
concerning educational accomplishment, life expectancy, child mortality, access to early
childhood education and employment outcomes (Parter, Wilson, and Hartz, 2019, p.5).
The policy was created in reaction to the demand of the social justice report and the close
the gap report social justice campaign of 2005 (Chino et al., 2019, p.1). In collaboration with
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, the Australian government agreed to combine
efforts to realize equity in life expectancy along with health status amidst aboriginal individuals
and non-aboriginal individuals (Head and O’Flynn 2015, p.341). It happened in March 2008
when they endorsed the indigenous health equality summit statement of intent (Das et al., 2018,
p.328) where they spend 1.6 billion dollars through four years on its aboriginal long-term disease

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package (Trivedi et al., 2017, p.502). The package focused on the expansion of the indigenous
workforce, primary health care along with preventive health.
The relevance of the closing of the gap strategy on aboriginal people is that it has
improved the health outcomes since fewer people die as a result of long-term illnesses. As an
illustration, the aboriginal and non-aboriginal mortality rate over the long term of 1998 to 2012
has decreased by 13.2 deaths and 7.5 deaths per 100,000 per annum accordingly (Ring et al.,
2016). For child mortality, there is a notable decline of 5.5 deaths per 100,000 per annum of the
indigenous people and 2.1 deaths per 100,000 per annum of the non-indigenous people (Ring et
al., 2016).
However, the cardiovascular disease has a notable decrease in the mortality proportion
for aboriginals and non-aboriginals of 12.3 and 7.7 deaths per 100,000 per year accordingly. For
cancer, it has a declined mortality proportion of 1.3 deaths per 100,000 per annum but an
inflation of 2.1 deaths per 100,000 per year of the aboriginal people (Ring et al., 2016).
The challenges which might have impacted the change in the wellbeing outcomes of the
aboriginal people may include the staff shortages particularly in remote areas (Kirkham et al.,
2017, p.524) along with the non-existence of indigenous team who could take a subsidiary
closing the gap exercise. Inadequate public transport services and the non-existence of cultural
awareness together with impartiality in general care also affected their change in health results.
Furthermore, the direct consultation and medication costs along with poor understanding
on immense billing operations and the deficiency of financing for aboriginal wellbeing strategies
was a challenge. Lastly, the health services not having the knowledge of the figure of the
aboriginal patients end up not identifying themselves because the staffs is not self-confident of