Improving Aboriginal Health Outcomes Through Social Innovation

This report proposes a social innovation to address the health gap between indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Australia. The proposed solution involves distributing battery-powered tablets pre-loaded with health information and resources tailored to address chronic disorders prevalent among Aboriginal populations. The aim is to improve health literacy, reduce reliance on healthcare services, and mitigate issues of stigmatization and cultural insensitivity. The report considers the financial, environmental, and ethical implications of the tablet program, highlighting its potential to reduce electricity consumption, minimize paper waste, and promote ethical healthcare practices. A key implementation challenge identified is the potential resistance from older community members to adopting new technology. Overall, the innovation seeks to empower Aboriginal individuals to manage their health proactively and improve their quality of life.

Running head: SOCIAL INNOVATION
SOCIAL INNOVATION
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary:
Indigenous people and their communities are still exposed to poor quality lives as a gap in health
status still remains quite pronounced in the aboriginal communities and non-indigenous
communities. Different health promotions programs and social reforms have been proposed but
the result in unsatisfactory, as the outcome is still poor. Therefore, with the help of social
innovation, a product was proposed that would help them to educate themselves about the
different lifestyle behaviours and how they could lead better quality lives. Such an innovation
would help them not only to develop health literacy but would also prevent them from being
stigmatised, discriminated or culturally ill-treated by the different professionals of the western
healthcare. These would help them to develop high quality lives, as they would be able to
understand the different behaviours that they need to change for leading better quality lives. The
tablet that would be given to them would be financially, ethically and economically have positive
impacts and would be thereby suitable for their use.

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Contents
Social innovation and community engagement theory:...................................................................3
Proposed social innovation:.............................................................................................................4
Financial, environmental and ethical implications of your social innovation:................................6
Significant implementation challenge:............................................................................................8
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:....................................................................................................................................10

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Social innovation and community engagement theory:
Social innovation can be referred to a very broad range of activity that incorporates an
innovative approach for helping communities to overcome specific issues or to develop the
quality of lives of people ensuring success of the community in various fields. This may include
development of the living conditions of the community, the health of the individuals, getting
newer opportunities like employments, better education and many others. In order to achieve
this, the concerned authorities undertaking social innovation need to undertake a number of
responsibilities. Social innovation mainly includes development of new products as well as
service and programmes. It also involves social entrepreneurship as well as the activity of
different types of social enterprises. It also may involve the task of reconfiguration of various
types of social relations with that of different types of power structures in the society, undertake
workplace innovations and thereby develop new models of local economic development. The
task of societal transformation and system change, different types of non-profit management and
enterprise led various sustainable developments are also some of the other roles that social
innovation can successfully play (Moulaert 2016). Over the years, there had been different
researchers who have defined the term of social innovation in different ways. However when
summed up together, this term mainly helps to describe the innovations made by man where they
had incorporated their skills, knowledge, creativity and innovative ideas to do new things for
communities and their individuals helping them to lead better quality lives. However, the term is
now considered to be based on a quasi-concept because of the nature of the different types of
remaining that are held true by policymakers, academics as well as practitioners. Therefore,
Harrison and Jenson define it as ‘a hybrid, making use of empirical analysis and thereby
deploying scientific methods, but simultaneously having an indeterminate quality making it

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adaptable to a variety of situations and flexible enough to follow the twists and turns of policy
(Harrison and Jenson 2013).
There have been multiple levels of social innovation. Researchers are of the opinion that
social innovation may be incremental that focuses on products as well as services. It could be
also be institutional that mainly focuses on the aspects of markets. Again, it may be disruptive
when the innovations are seen to focus on the social movements, levels or the political levels. All
these levels ensure working in ways that not only ensures community development but also
focuses on the engagement of the community on a successful level (Cajaiba-santalla 2014).
Again, another set of social innovations focuses on development of social relationships and
community engagement at two distinct levels. The macro level occurs between classes and social
groups and another is the micro level that occurs between individuals. Another set of researchers
while putting forward the social innovation theory had described three important scales. The first
one is called the niche that is equivalent to micro and mainly refers to spaces as well as safe
environments where social innovations occurs ensuring community engagement. Regimes are
equivalent to “meso” and are mainly the larger practices or rules that shape innovations. The last
one is the landscape that is equivalent to the macro levels and mainly refers to the backdrop that
sustains the society. Many of the researchers had referred it to the macro level of ‘political
constellations, economic cycles, and broad societal trends’ (Westley et al. 2011).
Proposed social innovation:
In the nation of Australia, a significant issue in healthcare is the identified gap in health
status of the native and non-native people. The aboriginal community are found to be not only
deprived of the different advanced technologies and ways of living, but their also suffer from

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financial constraints making them fall under the category of low socio-economic category.
Moreover, their lifestyles are such that it makes them exposed to various kinds of unhealthy
habits exposing them to develop different kinds of chronic disorders (Phillips et al. 2015). They
also do not have proper access to either healthcare services as they live in remote areas from
where travelling is financially or physically draining. Moreover, they also go through
discrimination, stigmatisation and culturally incompetent care that prevent them to seek service
from the healthcare institutions. There are different kinds of chronic disorders that the
aboriginals may suffer from (Rickwood et al. 2014). These are obesity, diabetes, kidney
disorders, and cardiovascular disorders, teenage pregnancy, smoking and alcohol disorders and
many others. One of the most important reason that contributes to such disorders is lack of
knowledge and health education about how to prevent them and even if they occur, the ways to
handle them. Therefore, many researchers are of the opinion that concerned authorities should
try their best to educate aboriginals that would help them to modify their lifestyles and develop
health literacy.
In order to educate the native patient, a new product and service needs to be developed
that is different from health promotion programs. Close the gap and similar such programs have
been proposed but the results are not as successful as expected. In order to help native people to
develop knowledge, battery mediated tablets should be distributed. Such tablets would run on
battery that would not need to be charged and are changeable when they over. Such tablets
would contain softwares that would have different applications for different disorders.
Individuals with particular disorder can go to the application of the particular illness. They can
seek out their needed information on how to handle such disorders, the activities that they should
avoid, the effects of the disorder on their health system, the number of professionals whom they

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can contact and similar others (Conrad 2015). This would be an innovative approach as every
native people in the community can manage their health without visiting healthcare centres that
are far from their communities. They would also not have to fear for facing stigmatisation,
discrimination. They would also not be exposed of culturally incompetent services from
healthcare professionals. They would be able to not only solve their own health issues and gain
knowledge about them but can also help to teach good habits to children helping them to develop
better quality lives in future. Therefore, this renewable battery led tablets would help in
developing quality lives of the aboriginal community by developing health literacy (Nandan
2015).
Financial, environmental and ethical implications of your social innovation:
The tablet that would be prepared will have renewable batteries that will give a lifecycle
of about 1 year to 1 ½ year. The lithium source of power will be adjusted in ways by which they
would be providing them service for more than a year. Moreover, the batteries of the tablets
would be such that it would not require electrical charging and this would in turn reduce their
electricity consumptions and hence this would not have financial constraints (Snowdon et al.
2015). Moreover, as the batteries would have high power, they would not have to but batteries
after repeated intervals and this would help them in saving money (Roy et al. 2014). Usually,
aboriginal people do not have string socio-economic position and therefore these tablets with
string batteries would not provide extra pressure on their economic condition. This would be the
financial advantage of using the tablet.
The tablet that will be developed will also have positive environmental impact. Different
researches conducted over the years have shown that tablets have indeed positive impacts on

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education criteria for all individuals mainly because it has different environments positive
impacts. Researchers have stated that using of tablets reduced the use of printed-paper that in
turn results in saving a huge number of trees and thereby preventing deforestation. Handing them
booklets for developing their health literacy would have resulted in huge amount of use of paper
creating pressure on trees. By the use of tablet, this issue can be prevented. Researchers have
also stated that the use of tablets have least carbon footprint impact than that of desktops as well
as laptops (Saffeidine et al. 2016). They have also stated that tablets have a carbon footprint
production of 153 Kg when they are used with a breakeven point of 8.15 months referring to 6
years, 9 months and 15 days of use with an average being four years of duration. From this
evidence, it can be suggested that the social innovation of using tablets as a method of education
has least negative impacts on the environments.
The tablets would also have positive ethical impacts on the community. Researchers have
suggested that due to less access to healthcare and cultural differences of the western
professionals with that of the native patients, it becomes very difficult for them to het health
education from them. This leads to ethical breaches as their autonomy and dignity of the native
people are affected and the ethical principle of justice is also not paid importance in many
healthcare centres (Nguyen et al. 2015). Therefore, the use of tablet would prevent the natives to
face any such ethical issues in their lives and at the same time would help them to get educated.
The tablets would help the aboriginals to develop the quality of health by making them
educated about the different aspects of their lifestyle that are making theme exposed to poor
quality living. They would not only provide preventative measures but would also help curative
measures in easy language without any technical jargons. This would help them to live better
quality lives.

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Significant implementation challenge:
One of the most important challenges that might be faced is to make the native people
take up the idea of using advanced technology in their communities. Studies conducted have
shown that there are teenagers who are quite enthusiastic to use technology in different aspects
of their life, the adults and mainly the older cohorts of the community may not feel comfortable
in taking up the social innovation (Jamal et al. 2015). Moreover, even if they take up the
proposal of using tablets in order to develop their health condition, they may not be able to use it
properly due to various reasons. They may not be comfortable with the use of such technology
due to language barrier, inability to handle gazettes, may become confused of the ways to handle
the applications and many others. Many of the individuals may not like the concept of getting
adapted to a new form of technology in their life and may not want to take up such activities in
their lives. Many of the researchers state that the older cohorts become concerned and stressed
with the new forms of technology, as they fear of the losing of connection with their traditional
perspectives of living lives (Ventola et al. 2014). Some of them feel as if this might disrespect
their culture if they fall prey to newer technologies. However, perceptions are changing and it
can be assured that with this helpful method of health education proposed by this form of social
innovation, the older patients can come out of their comfort zone and would like to venture its
advantages and benefits (Slev et al. 2016).
Conclusion:
Social innovation is the process by which different types of innovative services, products
and many other creative features can be proposed for community development ensuring that
community dwellers live better quality lives. Indigenous people are exposed to various kinds of
disorders due to their improper lifestyles like obesity, smoking disorders, diabetes and many

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others. It is extremely important for them to educate themselves about how they can prevent
themselves or cure themselves from such disorders. For them, tablet should be provided to each
of the households so that the members can educate themselves with easy language and pictures
and ensure that they live better quality lives.

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Harrison D and Jensen J. 2013. Social innovation research in Europe: Approaches, trends and
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