NSB202 - Yatdjuligin: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Well-Being

This essay delves into the complex healthcare landscape of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, highlighting the disparities they face and the initiatives aimed at addressing these inequalities. It contrasts the 'Close the Gap' and 'Closing the Gap' campaigns, examining their goals and the challenges in achieving health equity. The essay emphasizes the role of cultural safety in healthcare delivery and the importance of Aboriginal Hospital Liaison Officers in bridging the gap between medical personnel and Indigenous patients. It also addresses issues such as funding myths and the need for culturally appropriate healthcare practices, referencing relevant reports and studies to support its arguments. The essay concludes by underscoring the ongoing efforts to improve the health and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities through a human rights-based approach.

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People
Students name
Institutional affiliation

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Introduction
The holders of most unique languages, wisdom, beliefs with a mix of rare
traditional knowledge of good maintenance of natural resources especially land are
almost always the natives of the location in discussion. They hold on to the ancestral
landmarks be it Ancestral waters, lands and territories as they view them as a
fundamental part of their cultural and physical survival.
Australia’s natives are two very diverse cultural groups, Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples, made even further diverse was the fact that over 250 language
groups spanning over the nation. (AIATSIS, 2018)
Differences between close the gap and closing the gap
Australian cultures practice a lop-sided load of infections and social drawbacks in
comparison to non-Indigenous Australians. Additionally, indigenous people experience
higher levels of discrimination and racism. To better health outcomes for natives, health
service facilitation needs to be open to cultural variances. People expect and access
better outcomes from services that are culturally safe and respectful. (Australians
together, 2016)
Close the Gap is an awareness campaign focused on terminating the health gap.
It is managed by several NGO’s, native health bodies and humanitarian rights
organisations. Using support gained from federal and state governments, Close the gap
set two health goals: achieving health equity and dropping mortality rates for children
below five within a ten-year span.
Closing the gap was COAG’s 2008 national manifesto to deal with Indigenous
inequality. It included the ‘Indigenous Reform Agreement’ which was committed to

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
narrowing the gap between native and non-native Australians within a given time frame.
(Oxford Academic, 2010)
In close the gap, the Prime Minister of the Opposition signed the close the Gap
Statement of Intent (March 2008) a yearly report that explains government progress
against the two health targets, including the impact of cultural and social determinants
on these health outcomes. He established the yearly National shut the Gap Day from
2007. Mobilised support from over two hundred thousand Australians through the said
pledge. (Australiahuman rights commission, 2013)
The Australian natives have a different population age structure to the rest of the
population where ages 0-25 are more than the non-indigenous in both male and female
charts while the opposite is observed from age 35 onwards owing to the high fertility of
the natives although they have a low life expectancy rate. While most of the Indigenous
people reside either in major cities, inner or outer regions of Australia, the comparison
with the non-natives that live in remote or very remote areas is much higher.
AHRC close the gap report 2018
In his report, the prime minister sighted several findings with the fifth being labelled as
the ‘funding myth’ about native’s health that has to be looked at as it hinders progress.
This was the notion that devoted health expenses being a way to waste taxpayer funds.
He claimed if the Australian government is serious about achieving health equality
within a age group, a restored Closing the Gap Strategy must include obligations in the
direction of rational and unbiassed levels of investment. More spending on natives’
health should not have been a shock. (Humanrights.gov, 2018)

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Expenditure on the old, for instance, happens to be more than on the youth and
everyone recognizes that the old have greater health requirements to tend to. Similarly,
the native population have, on average, 2.3 times the illness burden of the non-
Indigenous population. Australian government health expenditure was $1.38 per native
person for every $1.00 consumed per non-Indigenous person in 2013-2014. (pmc.gov,
2017)
He noted that for the remainder of the Closing the Gap Strategy, the Australian
government expenses were not proportionate with the considerably superior and more
compound health requirements. Because non-Indigenous Australians bank considerably
depend on personal insurance and personal health suppliers to satisfy a lot of their
health requirements. Additionally, government sustenance for the overall situation for
Australian natives’ health can be considered as a ‘market failure’ as private foundations
would not make up the deficit.
Meetings uncovered two primary kinds of elements impacting the experience of
non-Aboriginal wellbeing experts working with Aboriginal individuals in clinics: the
association and the person. Inside these two factors, a couple of sub-factors were
observed to be significant including authoritative culture, hierarchical help, availability
of wellbeing administrations and reacting to desires for the more extensive wellbeing
framework and individual belief system and attention to colonization.
Patient escort
Understanding escorts work obligations incorporate transporting patients by
helping them all through cabs, ambulances, vehicles, and helicopters, lifting patients on
and off beds; moving them to and from uncommon administration and treatment zones,

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and working rooms; utilizing wheelchairs or moveable beds. Correspondence,
productivity and suitability are key factors that are progressed as affecting on the quality
and security of non-crisis transport administrations. (Oxford Academic, 2010)
Institutionalization of the non-crisis transport process indicates guarantee in
decreasing danger and expanding productivity. Applying data and correspondence
innovation to improve the nature of transport administrations has gotten little
consideration notwithstanding its potential advantages. Understanding results in
connection to quality and security of transport administrations are once in a while
estimated. Accessible proof proposes that security of non-crisis understanding
exchanges is once in a while bargained because of poor institutionalization and
disappointments in correspondence forms. (Alfred Health, 2018)
Locals in Australia keep on encountering noteworthy wellbeing, social
and financial detriment. To improve future and decrease the weight of ailment, a few
methodologies and national structures have implanted a human rights-based way to deal
with accomplishing wellbeing identicalness. Regardless of its source in an arrangement
of law that discovered colonization adequate and the distance of Indigenous people
groups, human rights have developed as the global language through which opposition
from persecution has been voiced, and an instrument by which redemption can,
speculatively, be accomplished. The inalienable pressures that exist in connecting with
an arrangement of law dependent on boundless suppositions of the light to progress
Indigenous rights and exhibit how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals
have utilized, just as affected, global human rights treatise and law in their push to
handle fundamental wellbeing and financial downside. While there is as yet a best
approach along a perplexing way before the local populace accomplish wellbeing

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correspondence, the human rights structure has furnished Indigenous Australians with
instruments to impact government procedures concerning wellbeing. (E-International
relations Students, 2014)
Role of Aboriginal/indigenous Hospital Liaison Officer
In Australia, the present health safety and quality standards square measure short
to confirm culturally safe look after native patients to attain optimum care outcomes.
Wherever “business as usual” health care is perceived as humiliating or disempowering
— that's, deemed racist or culturally unsafe — it should considerably cut back treatment
adherence or end in complete disengagement even once this might be critical. Peak
native health bodies argue that boosting the probability of culturally safe clinical care
could considerably contribute to native health improvement. It follows that an additional
specific embedding of cultural safety among obligatory standards for safe, quality-
assured clinical care could strengthen the presently inadequate Closing the Gap
mechanisms associated with health healthcare delivery. (Science gov, 2017)
The causes of unjust health care square measure several. Western medical
specialty practice differs from native foundational, holistic attention to the physical,
emotional, mental and religious prosperity of the person and therefore the community.5
a writing revealed during this issue of the MJA deals with the link between culture and
language in up communication in native health settings, a vital part of delivering
cultural safety. (Medical Journal of Australia, 2017)
Aboriginal Hospital Liaison Officers offer support to Aboriginal patients,
families, community members and their staff. They support Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders by: Improving healthcare services as well as maintain positive relations within

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the Aboriginal community, they act as a link between medical personnel and the
patient(s), Assist during discharge ensuring the patient(s) are well supported and
understand follow up medical care. They also provide education to the wider Alfred
Health Staff to increase understanding of the Aboriginal community. (Alfred Health,
2018)
The officer would have acted as an intermediary to Mike and his mother and the
hospital. During the challenges experienced, he would have found out root of the
problem and worked to prevent future occurrences of the same problem. He would have
communicated with his mother ensuring her comfort and ease in accessing the Closing
the Gap funding. He or she would also have explained to the nurse who believed
“indigenous people get everything” and explain how the Aboriginals cultural safety
needs to be applied.
Conclusion
There are two native societies in Australia, Aboriginals and Torres Strait
Islander. These two communities face challenges all round such as health care, racism,
socioeconomic status among others. Closing the gap and close the gap foundations were
created to try and eliminate any drawback within the field of medicine for the
Indigenous. Both serve to reduce the health gap difference between indigenous and non-
indigenous population of Australia by carrying out studies, placement of various models
in hospitals and setting up of funds for the benefit of the indigenous population.

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References
AIATSIS. (2018, Mar 21). Retrieved from ndigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/indigenous-australians-
aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people
Alfred Health. (2018). Retrieved from Aboriginal Hospital Liaison Officers:
https://www.alfredhealth.org.au/patients-families-friends/while-you-are-here/
aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-patients
Australiahuman rights commission. (2013, March 21). Retrieved from Close the gap:
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-
social-justice/projects/close-gap-indigenous-health
Australians together. (2016). Retrieved from Indigenous disadvantage:
https://australianstogether.org.au/discover/the-wound/indigenous-disadvantage-in-
australia/
E-International relations Students. (2014, May 26). Retrieved from Weakening UN declaration:
https://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/26/the-weakening-of-the-un-declaration-on-the-
rights-of-indigenous-peoples/
Humanrights.gov. (2018, feb 8). Retrieved from Australian Human Rights Commision:
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-
social-justice/publications/close-gap-10-year-review
Medical Journal of Australia. (2017, Aug). Retrieved from Embedding cultural safety in
Australia’s main health care standards:
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2017/207/1/embedding-cultural-safety-australias-
main-health-care-standards
Oxford Academic. (2010). Retrieved from International journal for quality in health care:
https://academic.oup.com/intqhc/article/23/1/68/1798760
Science gov. (2017). Retrieved from Sample records for aboriginal health service:
https://www.science.gov/topicpages/a/aboriginal+health+service