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The health and welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: an overview 2011

by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Report
Year	2011
City	Canberra
Institution	Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
Date	5 May 2011
Report number	AIHW Catalogue no IHW 42

Abstract

This overview is a summary of Indigenous health and welfare at the national level. Topics covered include:

demographic characteristics
determinants of health and welfare: socioeconomic factors, housing, community capacity, behavioural factors, and social and emotional wellbeing
health and functioning: disability, community functioning, and health conditions
mortality and life expectancy of mothers and babies, children, young people and older people
health care and support services, including health and welfare expenditure.

The report compares Indigenous statistics to the non-Indigenous statistics on the same health and welfare issues and provides time series data where available. It relates the picture of Indigenous health and welfare to the goals set by the Council of Australian Governments and the raft of measures under Closing the gap agreement aimed at reducing the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. For the first time, the report looks at the impact of chronic diseases on the life expectancy gap, currently estimated to be 12 years for men and 10 years for women. It shows that about 80% of the mortality gap can be attributed to chronic diseases, most significantly heart diseases (22%), diabetes (12%) and liver diseases (11%).

The report is accompanied by nine online papers on specific topics, available from the Indigenous observatory: Indigenous life expectancy and mortality, child safety, eye health, disability, access to health services, chronic disease and older people.

Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet abstract