The big question
Close the Gap Day 2022
How can we as a nation improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?
Fourteen years after the Closing the Gap agenda was introduced in 2008, the inequities that it represents are still being lived by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples every single day.
So, how can Australia improve to ensure greater health and wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?
Research News asked members of UQ's Poche Centre for Indigenous Health.
Professor James Ward
Director
Pitjantjatjara and Nukunu man
There are many issues that will help move us towards equity in Australia. Things like signing the Uluru statement are important symbolic tools and measures. But so far governments have ignored the goodwill and intent of communities around the country.
I think we need to do better as a nation, to listen and act on what Indigenous peoples are saying here in Australia.
For Aboriginal people health is not just the presence, or absence, of disease. It's how connected we are as peoples and to country. It's about our culture, it's about the prevailing issues we face, such as racism. It's the state of land, it's the state of people, it's the status of our place in this country.
So we really need to take a broad look at health, and especially at health research. It's easy to look at things in silos or body parts or disease, but we have to do better, as a nation to encompass the broader definition of health as it relates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Associate Professor Steve Bell
Principal Research Fellow
Inequities in health cannot be disconnected from inequities in education, employment, housing, and overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system. These inequities are bound up in unequal power relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples that exist now, and have done since colonisation began.
There have been 230 years of failed policies, created by governments and inflicted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, without credible commitment to Indigenous self-determination.
Whether deliberately violent or well-intended, government policies have led to too little progress in health outcomes. Echoing calls from leading Indigenous scholars and activists, so much change is needed:
Health inequities should be seen as a problem of government responses, not of individual behaviour.
Instead of endless epidemiological surveillance of health disparities, we need transdisciplinary approaches documenting strategies that eliminate inequities and injustice.
Above all, greater support – politically and economically – is needed for communities and community-controlled organisations to determine the design and delivery of services and policies, based on Indigenous expertise, knowledges and worldviews.
Matthew O'Dwyer
Senior Research Assistant
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the answers, skills, capacity, and the know-how. Health initiatives are best to be community driven and led, with the power and decision making in the hands of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
We, as a nation, need to respect the voice of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and work together, when requested, to make the solutions a reality.
It is important to note what might work in the non-Indigenous setting, does not always work for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and this difference needs to be respected.
Government and other health bodies need to provide a genuine platform for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to allow the work to be done, it needs to extend from being a tick box in a meeting or workplace, with no tangible results, to seeing the outcomes play out where it matters most – in the real world and the communities.
If it is not already being done, I believe there should be greater awareness and education regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, ways, relationships to land, and law.
The true history of colonisation and the atrocities experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be taught in schools from an early age, and consistently. I believe this will have a positive effect on ignorance and racism, leading to greater respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples past, present and future.
Image: Adobe Stock/Dominique Felicity Photography/Stocksy
Shea Spierings
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Gaangulu man
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health requires a comprehensive approach to addressing contemporary health issues experienced by Indigenous communities. These efforts must be led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and community elders, but with the support of mainstream health organisations, and policymakers.
The hard work is being done by the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector. Our research at Poche supports this amazing work, including here in Brisbane with our major partner, the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH).
No one knows the health needs of a community better than the community itself.
Lauren Trask
Research Officer
It's about respect and reciprocity.
Firstly, there are incredible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders with the wisdom, the lens and the knowledge, who have explained what needs to happen and how it needs to happen.
Those with the powers to adequately fund and enact the changes required to achieve equitable access to fit-for-purpose services that meet the needs of individuals, families, communities and society are not listening; neither do they hear the full message.
Imagine if we had a system that treated the whole person, not just the disease or body part. Imagine if clinicians could look beyond the biomedical and chemo-prophylaxis and work with the person, as well as extend to understand their family, their community and their connections.
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