An Analysis of Closing the Gap Policy's Influence on Aboriginal Health

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Closing the Gap (CTG) policy and its effects on the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. It begins with an introduction to the CTG campaign, its goals, and historical context, including the government's strategies to address health disparities. The report delves into the policy's impact on diabetes, social determinants of health, and the benefits of registration with CTG programs. It also examines the roles and contributions of the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) and Aboriginal Liaison Officers (ALO) in providing healthcare and support to Indigenous communities, including their collaboration with community health care. The report highlights the significance of these services in improving health outcomes, addressing mental health concerns, and promoting culturally appropriate healthcare. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the importance of the CTG campaign in improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It also incorporates relevant literature and references to support the analysis.

Exploring the impact of Policy on Health

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
1. Closing the gap policy:............................................................................................................3
2. Analysis...................................................................................................................................4
3. Potential benefits and impact of being registered with CTG on Judys social determinants of
health ..........................................................................................................................................5
4. Roles of Aboriginal Medical service and Aboriginal Liason Officer and their services........6
5. Contribution of AMS and ALO:.............................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Closing the gap campaign was started by government of Australia in order to handle
issues which affects negatively the aboriginals of Australia(Browne & et.al., 2017). The study
will outline concept of closing the gap campaign. It will also highlight policies of CTG related to
diabetes. Benefits by the patient on registering with CTG has also been explained in the report.
The role performed by aboriginal liaison officer and aboriginal medical services has also been
discussed in the report.
1. Closing the gap policy:
Closing the gap campaign is a strategy which is developed by coalition of Australian
government in order to handle issues which affects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Australians. It is the strategy by government which aims at reducing disadvantage to aboriginal
and Torres strait islander people thus providing them access early childhood education and also
providing them educational achievement, child mortality and life expectancy.
History and data about closing the gap:
The report of social justice was released by the Social justice commissioner in year 2005.
In year 2006 the Closing the gap campaign was started as a National Indigenous health equality
campaign, and various organisation volunteer to be a part of the campaign. Some of the
organisations are:
 Human rights and equal opportunity commission
 Oxfam Australia
 AIDA(Australian Indigenous Doctor's Association)
 NACCHO (National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation)
More than 40 non indigenous health organisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander,
and human right organisation has taken part in this campaign.
Due to the campaign there has been a successful improvement in the employment,
education and health status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people but out of seven only
two gaps target were on track which has to be met by the government by the year 2018. for
filling the gap COAG has decided to reframe the closing the gap strategies and make changes
accordingly(Huo and et.al., 2016).

In year 2018, on 12 December COAG has released COAG statement of CTG refresh
which aims at improvement in policies related to health, house, education, families, land and
waters etc.
Aboriginal and Torress strait islander people are the people who are living for about
minimum 50,000 years in Australia. It is world's oldest surviving culture. About 30% of people
indigenous communities are living with type 2 diabetes. While 95 % of aboriginal and Torres
people are dying due to suicide. There are several other worst factors like this in order to deal
with this situation government of Australia has taken a measure as Changing the gap campaign.
Significance of CTG policy on health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait People's
Literature review
According to Parter, Wilson & Hartz, (2018) the main aim of closing the gap campaign
was to fill the gap or we can say close the gap between health and life expectancy of non
indigenous and Australians aboriginal and Torres strait people. The campaign has resulted in
improvement in health status of Aboriginal and Torres strait islander.
Browne & et.al., (2017) thinks that closing the gap strategy needed to be changed as
Aboriginal and Torres strait islander health inequality are not are not going away instead it is
getting worse day by day and thus now require more national response.
Olga Anikeeva, Rachel Katterl and Petra Bywood has conducted the study in order to
evaluate activities which has been undertaken for improving and making easy access to primary
care by indigenous Australians. The data of about 12 month was taken from 86 division and has
been thematically analysed by using Nvivo 9 software. It was found that there are various
barriers arises in process such as
Financial: Lack of knowledge about bulkbiling practice, insufficient funding for health
programme
Transport: lack of appropriate public transport services
2. Analysis
Social determinants are:
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Community infrastructure and poor working condition: the poor living condition is one of the
social determinant behind type 2 diabetes in Judy.
Poor education and limited resources: As Judy does not get access to education therefore she
does not know the symptoms and the precautions to be taken.
Nutritious food: The other major determinant is nutritious food. As due to poor living condition
Judy does not have proper access to nutritious food which is one reason behind diabetes.
As per closing the gap policy which integrates social determinants approach for Type 2
can sometimes be prevented or it can be delayed by champaign the lifestyle of patient. As Judy is
suffering from diabetes 2 the below mentioned steps as per the CTG policy can help in order to
prevent diabetes:
Education and early life: Poor health of children as well as adults needs to be addressed with
educational attainment. Educational attainment of both men as well as women leads to creation
of engaged citizen and which will also result in increase in participation and leads to productive
society.
Nutritious food: As the aboriginal and Torres strait Islander communities have limited access to
healthy and fresh foods which is also one of the major cause in increase in diabetes in Australia.
As Judy is also suffering form diabetes therefore its impact can be prevented through healthy
eating plan, maintaining healthy body weight, managing cholesterol level, community
infrastructure and poor working condition and physically active
3. Potential benefits and impact of being registered with CTG on Judys social determinants of
health
On registering with closing the gap Judy will get benefited as closing the gap campaign
provides various of services and health care to the patients suffering from diabetes. As many
aboriginal peoples in Australia is suffering mainly from higher rates of heart diseases, kidney
failure, diabetes and cancer. The Judy will get the following benefit from closing the gap
campaign:
Education: The care coordinators will help aboriginal women to understand about the diabetes
and her health condition and they will also assist her to learn how to manage own health with the
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help of set care plan. The women will also be benefited as Judy will get multidisciplinary care(St
Clair, M., and et.al., 2018).
The pharmaceutical benefits will be provided to Judy which will help in equity of life
expectancy.
According to national plan which has been created for aboriginal and Torres strait islander their
will be proper supply of fresh healthy food. Thus Judy will get a healthy and fresh food which
will prevent the diabetes.
4. Roles of Aboriginal Medical service and Aboriginal Liason Officer and their services
The main aim of Aboriginal Medical Service is to raise the health standards of
Aboriginal communities all over Australia.
Role of aboriginal medical services:
AMS provides primary clinical care to aboriginal and Torres strait people. The primary care
services which they provide are:
 24 hour emergency care
 Availability of Essential drugs
 proper treatment of chronic illness
Preventive care services:
 antenatal care
 Proper check-ups and early stage interventions to adults as well as children
 control over communicable diseases
Role of ALO:
ALO provides emotional, cultural and social support to aboriginal and Torres strati patients as
well as to their families when the patient use hospitals(Parter, Wilson & Hartz, 2018).
Services provide by ALO:
 ALO provide support and useful information to staff of the organisation to provide health
care services by keeping take care of cultural sensitive issue.
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 Wile admission to hospital and going home the ALO assists patients in making necessary
arrangements
 Acts as a liaison on behalf of patient and their family(Aboriginal liaison officer (ALO)
involvement, 2019)
5. Contribution of AMS and ALO:
The AMS will provide culturally alternative to medical services which aims in order to
provide care for preventing diabetes and also provide indigenous right and empowerment. AMS
will help to avoid any type of negative impact which occurs as a result of discrimination on
indigenous health by empowering the community and providing culturally appropriate healthcare
services. AMS will focus on addressing mental health concerns of Judy so that issues related to
health inequalities in Australia can be addressed.
Whereas ALO will provide advocacy, support and education to Judy and to her family
which is her two sons. ALO will also improve cultural competence of health workers so that they
can build trust with the patient and their family(Cloete, Mitchell, & Morton, (2019).
Relationship between AMS,ALO and community health
Aboriginal medical services aims to improve health standards of aboriginal communities of
Australia while aboriginal liaison officer aims at providing social, emotional as well as cultural
support to families and aboriginal patients and community health care are places which provides
many services related to dental, pharmacy, behavioural and medical(Aboriginal Medical Service
AMS, 2019). There are various health communities who are providing the services under the
closing the gap campaign. It is important that AMS, ALO and community health care should
work together for the betterment of aboriginal nd Torres strait people.
Aboriginal medical services are generally not runned by community instead it is runned by state
or territory government.
CONCLUSION
The report helps in giving understanding the concept of closing the gap as well as the
history about CTG campaign. The initiative taken by the government of Australia is good as it
aims in the better lifestyle of aboriginal and Terros strait people of Australia. The necessary
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policies of CTG has also been taken in report. It has also helped in understanding that how CTG
will help the patients who are registered under the campaign.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Browne, J. & et.al., (2017). A network approach to policy framing: a case study of the National
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan. Social Science & Medicine, 172, 10-
18.
Cloete, L., Mitchell, B. G., & Morton, D. (2019). Protocol: investigating the effectiveness and
cost benefit of a lifestyle intervention targeting type 2 diabetes in Australia. BMC
endocrine disorders. 19(1). 74.
Huo, L., and et.al., (2016). Burden of diabetes in Australia: life expectancy and disability-free
life expectancy in adults with diabetes. Diabetologia. 59(7). 1437-1445.
Parter, C., Wilson, S., & Hartz, D. L. (2018). The Closing the Gap (CTG) Refresh: Should
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture be incorporated in the CTG framework?
How?. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health.
St Clair, M., and et.al., (2018, August). Telehealth: A Game Changer–Closing the Gap in
Remote Indigenous Health in Three Remote Homeland Communities in the Laynhapuy
Homelands, East Arnhem, Northern Australia. In Connecting the System to Enhance the
Practitioner and Consumer Experience in Healthcare: Selected Papers from the 26th
Australian National Health Informatics Conference (HIC 2018) (Vol. 252, p. 132). IOS
Press.
Wang, C. C. (2016). Closing the gap in nursing education: Comparing nursing registration
systems in Australia and China. Chinese Nursing Research. 3(1). 1-6.
Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS). 2017. [ONLINE] Available
through :<https://nacchocommunique.com/tag/aboriginal-medical-service-ams/>
Aboriginal liaison officer (ALO) involvement. 2019. [ONLINE] Available
through :<http://www.aphasiapathway.com.au/?name=Aboriginal-liaison-officer-involvement>
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