- Honouring LGBTQI+ legends that walked before us
- Rural GPs want more support for those with AOD issues
- Push to increase higher education presence
- CVD hospital presentation data analaysis
- Antibiotics or watchful waiting for acute otitis media
- Sector Jobs
- Key Dates – Hearing Awareness Week – 1-7 March 2024
The NACCHO Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health News is a platform we use to showcase the important work being done in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, focusing on the work of NACCHO, NACCHO members and NACCHO affiliates.
We also share a curated selection of news stories that are of likely interest to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector, broadly.
Honouring LGBTQI+ legends that walked before us
Lying in a sterile, pink-hued rural hospital room in the early nineties, Wulbunja man Rossy Smith was dealing with a death sentence. But it wasn’t the physical pain and unknowns of his condition that hurt him most, rather, it was the gowns, gloves, and masks worn by people around him. “It really, really made him feel degraded,” Mr Smith’s best friend Rossy Moore remembered, adding that his small community of Moruya — on the south coast of NSW — still feared HIV and AIDS at the time. “It shamed him … He hated it.”
Wiradjuri Wulbunja woman Jinny-Jane Smith was one of Rossy Smith’s beloved nieces. Her strongest memory of her uncle was his love and support for family. “He was this vibrant, poppy, energetic, extra bubbly human who was just filled with love,” she said. “But then he pulled back from loving us, he pulled back from the big sloppy kisses and cuddles.” Ms Smith was about 12 years old when she lost her uncle to AIDS. Jinny-Jane Smith’s grief and loss had a profound impact on her coming out as “a very visible lesbian woman”, and would shape her career. “I talk very openly and honestly around HIV, getting tested, the use of PrEP, PEP, and condoms,” she said.
Knowing there weren’t a lot of sexual health conversations in the queer Black space, in 2017 Ms Smith founded BlaQ — a peak Aboriginal LGBTQ not-for-profit organisation. In her current role as program manager for First Nations health projects at ACON – NSW’s leading HIV and LGBTQ+ health organisation – Ms Smith ensures her community is safely informed about sexual health and disease prevention. For Jinny-Jane Smith, Saturday’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was an important calendar item for “the black rainbow community to be seen and heard” and an opportunity to further change HIV and AIDS stereotypes and stigmas.
To view the ABC News article Rossy Smith felt humiliated by his AIDS diagnosis. What happened next changed First Nations health forever in full click here.
Rural GPs want more support for those with AOD issues
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) has called on the federal government to help GPs and practice teams help more people with alcohol and other drug issues including opiate abuse. The RACGP call to action followed the release of the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2022-2023 which found 1% of people drank alcohol in ways which risked their health, 47% of people had used an illicit drug and while cigarette smoking had declined from 11% to 8.3% the use of e-cigarettes and vapes nearly tripled from 2.5% to 7%.
RACGP vice-president and national rural chair Dr Michael Clements said an added challenge people living in remote and rural locations faced over the tyranny of distance was often a dearth of local healthcare professionals. Based in Townsville, Dr Clements said he regularly travelled to remote areas including the Gulf of Carpentaria to operate clinics to communities who otherwise would have to drive for days to access healthcare services. “As well as operating clinics in Townsville I visit Karumba and the lower Gulf every week or two,” he said. “I pilot my own plane, a Cirrus SR-22 which can carry four people so I can fly out registrars, obstetricians for women’s health and specialists to run clinics as they are needed, “Flying from Townsville to Karumba is the equivalent of going from London to Zurich, I think many health industry professionals don’t appreciate the distances people would otherwise have to travel to access healthcare.”
To above has been extracted from the article Rural GPs call for more support to help those addicted to drugs published in the Queensland Country Life earlier today, Monday 4 March 2024.
RACGP vice-president and national rural chair Dr Michael Clements is based in Townsville but regularly visits the Gulf region to provide clinics to remote communities. Image source: Queensland Country Life.
Push to increase higher education presence
The federal government has released the final report, available here, on a Universities Accord. Taking more than a year to prepare, it is billed as a “blueprint” for reform for the next decade and beyond. It contains 47 recommendations across student fees, wellbeing, funding, teaching, research and university governance. The report calls for meaningful steps to increase the numbers of Indigenous graduates and Indigenous leaders in higher education.
The philosophy of “nothing about us without us” runs through the report, with recommendations for Indigenous leadership in policies, programs, funding and decision-making. Is this enough? One of the key recommendations of the report is to raise Indigenous participation at university. The accord wants Australia’s university student population to reflect the demographic composition of Australian society.
It wants to do this by introducing equity targets. At the moment, Indigenous Australians make up 3.7% of the Australian population but only 1.5% of university completions. In part, it hopes to do this with more government-supported university places for Indigenous students and scholarships. It also has a strong element of self-determination, with a proposed First Nations-led review of universities and a First Nations council to provide advice to the federal education minister and sector. The report also calls for an increase of more Indigenous people in leadership and governance positions within universities.
To view The Conversation article Universities Accord: there’s a push to increase Indigenous students and voices in higher education. But we need more detail and funding in full click here.
Image source: The Conversation.
CVD hospital presentation data analysis
The overall cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality risk in Australia is 1.5 times as high for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) people as for other Australians. The difference in risk in Victoria, however, is unknown: data for Indigenous Victorians have been excluded from national reports on Indigenous cardiovascular mortality because of concerns regarding the quality of Indigenous identification in Victorian administrative data.
Led by an Aboriginal cardiologist, administrative data has been analyses to characterise CVD events and outcomes for Indigenous Victorians. as part of the analysis the characteristics of Indigenous and non‐Indigenous patients was compared. Of the 84,383 people who presented to hospital with CVD events during 2011–19, 881 were Indigenous people (1.0%). The most frequent CVD event was coronary heart disease for both Indigenous (451 of 881 patients, 51.2%) and non‐Indigenous people (37,893 of 82,467 patients, 45.9%). A total of 419 of 819 Indigenous patients (51.2%) and 33,473 of 76,682 non‐Indigenous patients (43.7%) lived in postcodes in the two lowest socio‐economic status quintiles; 581 of 826 Indigenous patients (70.3%) and 66,166 of 76 997 non‐Indigenous patients lived in major cities (85.9%)
The study derived Indigenous community‐relevant insights from administrative health data. The median age of people who presented to hospital with CVD events was 11 years lower for Indigenous than non‐Indigenous people, and a larger proportion (more than half) lived in areas of lower socio‐economic status. These findings indicate the importance of taking social health determinants into account when attempting to reduce the CVD burden for Indigenous people in Victoria. The findings will inform the development of culturally appropriate CVD prevention and treatment programs in collaboration with Victorian Indigenous communities.
To view The Medical Journal of Australia article Presentations to selected Melbourne hospitals with cardiovascular disease by Indigenous and non‐Indigenous people, 2011–19: a linked administrative data analysis in full click here.
Image source: The Medical Journal of Australia.
Antibiotics or watchful waiting for acute otitis media
Acute otitis media, one of the most common infectious disorders during childhood, can be caused by viruses, but usually has a bacterial origin. It is among the most frequent reasons for prescribing antibiotics for children. Episodes of acute otitis media are often self‐limiting and resolve without treatment, but antibiotics are regularly prescribed because, if persistent, it can develop into chronic ear disease that may lead to perforation of the tympanic membrane, hearing loss, and, less frequently, serious and even life‐threatening complications. In Australia, an estimated 80% of general practice presentations by children under 15 years of age with acute otitis media result in the prescribing of antibiotics. The risks of complications are greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in remote communities, and the prescribing of antibiotics consequently more appropriate.
A recent report has highlighted the importance of involving the parents and carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in decisions about treating acute otitis media, particularly given the limited benefit of antibiotics for this disease and the risks for the community that result from their overuse. The authors used a qualitative approach to provide a voice to families who participated in the WATCH randomised clinical trial, which compared the benefits of watchful waiting and antibiotic therapy for urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with acute otitis media. Reath and colleagues found a diversity of opinion among parents and in the community regarding the use of antibiotics. For many, watchful waiting alone was an acceptable or preferred approach to managing acute otitis media; other preferred that a prescription be provided alongside watchful waiting so that they could readily access antibiotics should they feel they were required.
The report illustrates the importance of clinicians in primary care engaging in respectful partnerships with families to develop an approach to acute otitis media that reflects the needs of the child and is informed by the experience of the family. General practitioners and other primary care clinicians are central to increased engagement and partnership with families in shared decision making. Increasing the involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in primary care services will facilitate increased trust and enable a partnership between families and clinicians for improving ear health care for Aboriginal children.
To view The Medical Journal of Australia article Antibiotics or watchful waiting for acute otitis media in urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children? in full click here.
Hearing Australia senior audiologist Katrina Oliveiro conducting a hearing assessment. Image source: The Maitland Mercury.
Sector Jobs – you can see sector job listings on the NACCHO website here.
Advertising Jobs – to advertise a job vacancy click here to go to the NACCHO website current job listings webpage. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a Post A Job form. You can complete this form with your job vacancy details – it will then be approved for posting and go live on the NACCHO website.
Hearing Awareness Week – 1-7 March 2024
Hearing Awareness Week is from 1-7 March. It is an annual event that highlights the issues affecting Australians living with hearing loss. The awareness week is a vital part of the ongoing effort by the government of Australia and its NGOs to improve the issues that people with hearing loss face. 3.5 million Australians aged 15 and over, which represents 22% of its population, have mild to severe hearing issues. An average of one in six Australians has a hearing disability.
Hearing Awareness Week aims to spread awareness about the positive impact of looking after our hearing health, which contributes to our quality of life, social engagement, career, confidence, and communication and encourage the general public, especially employers, to offer more support, make society more inclusive, and the workplace more conducive for Australians with hearing loss.
You can find more information about Hearing Awareness Week here.
