Closing the Life Expectancy Gap: Indigenous Australians' Health Policies

“Life expectancy is a measure of how long, on average, a person is expected to live if current mortality rates in every age group remained constant throughout a person’s life and therefore expressed as the number of years of life remaining. The health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians has remained at a disadvantage as compared to non-Indigenous Australians for many years now . Whilst greater awareness in recent times has contributed to an improvement to some extent, many long-standing challenges remain. Many policy makers in the recent past have initiated several policies, programs, funding and initiatives to help close the so called gap.

One of the most prolific policies in the recent times is the policy known as the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Health Strategy. In order to address the gap in women's health between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, this federal policy is pressing towards an equal opportunity for Indigenous Australians and aid in closing the gap in life expectancy through many strategies such as “working in partnerships, focusing on community safety, promoting employment, education and early childhood, housing flexible remote service delivery, Indigenous

broadcasting and Indigenous legal assistance services.”

This policy divides itself into 3 areas to target the specific needs in order to build on its aim to close the gap. The following goals have been established through this national policy:
• Supportive environments

Many of the indigenous women often find themselves living in unsupported and stressful environments resulting in them being twice as likely as compared to non indigenous women to report of high levels of psychological distress with report levels of 32% in Indigenous women as compared to 21%.

In relation to this, this policy delivers many leadership programs and forums that concentrate on developing their personalities whilst “Providing community development opportunities to de-normalise violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander communities. For example, promoting the value of Indigenous women in the community, men also supporting Indigenous women in the community, and healthy cultural forms of

communication”.
However, despite this, some major recommendations have been proposed by our group that include the need for greater indigenous women “unemployment and educational departments in rural areas to encourage and support women in workforce as Indigenous women who are employed or have an adequate level of income are more likely to be happy through increased access to health and other necessary services contributing to better living standards thus increased life expectancy.” Furthermore, by building more childcares centres, it will encourage and allow indigenous women to attend community business, education and employment.

The second part of this policy focuses on Health service access and equity. Greater access to health services will contribute to their increased level of life expectancy. Under this section the policy has set up “reports on indigenous women ‘s participation and outcomes
in women‟s health services, such as, cancer screening, STIs & BBVs notifications, birth outcomes, chronic disease outcomes etc along with the Implementation of premature ageing policy that looks into home and community care or rehab support for women experiencing early onset of chronic conditions.” Recommendations for this area made by our group include Supported Accommodation Assistance Program needs greater government funding as On average, 1 in every 14 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman is a client of this assistance as compared to 1 in 169 for non - Indigenous women. If basic shelter and other physical needs such as food, water, sleep and safety are problematic for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and their children then it is problematic and difficult for them to consider other needs or issues such as employment or education hence contributing to their lower life expectancy.

The 3rd area of focus is the woman in health workforce to understand the importance of health. This is done through “ Increasing the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women working and studying in the health workforce particularly in women’s health area, promoting the importance of health and holding Biannual Indigenous women’s health conferences . While promoting health, our group believes that there is a greater need for aboriginal doctors in health services if Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women feel that they do not belong to the health services provided, this will have a direct impact on whether they believe that the services are supportive enough and whether they might access those service.

Greater awareness due to media attention and many national and state initiatives along with policies such as building trust through partnerships, providing safe health and environment plan, strengthening indigenous work force all implemented by the NSW state government have helped in increasing the life expectancy of indigenous population over the years as suggested by the graph. However, greater federal funding and program in the future will only increase that number in the coming years.