Racism and Health Status of Indigenous
Australians
According to Kelaher et al. (2014) and Ferdinand et al.
(2013), the relationship among the self-reported idea or struggle of racism and
low physical and psychological health is well-settled. Racism can affect health
in various routes, including less availability of societal resources, such as
education, job, accommodation, and healthcare facilities, and can provide
unfair exposure to risk elements containing cortisol dysregulation and stress,
are impacting the psychological health and physiological health of the
individuals in different methods.
Nationally and globally different, longitudinal and
cross-sectional, studies have established a prominent link between the experiences
of racism and distress in the mental and physical health conditions of the
individual. Moreover, experiences in racism also impacted the risk behaviors of
the individuals, such as drug misuse (Paradies 2007; Gee et al. 2009; Paradies
et al. 2014).
Furthermore, Egger et al. (2014) declared that long-term
experiences with racism give a lot of stress to the individual and stress plays
a crucial role in inflammation, obesity and chronic diseases. Besides that, a Health Survey conducted in 2012-13 stated
that native Australians with increased levels of stress were 1.3 times more
likely to get a Circulatory system disease and 1.8 times more likely to get a
kidney disease.
Measuring socioeconomic inequalities in health
Measuring the gap of well-being among different social
groups is important because social determinants, the condition in which people
are born, grow, live, etc., are said to be the key cause of health biases. It
will contribute to providing the necessary information for guidelines, programs,
and usual procedures. The most common way of measuring it is
i.
Classify
the inhabitants of a place by their socioeconomic place.
ii.
Divide the inhabitants into categories according
to this ranking and
iii.
Compare these groups according to the required
health indicators.
The most common elements used for ranking the inhabitants of
a country by their socioeconomic positions are education, occupation or income
level but at times many other factors are also used, such as family structure,
accommodation, availability of resources etc. These elements are indicating the
social conditions of the populations. Moreover, identical links between
socioeconomic positions and health of the individuals are found, regardless of
which elements were utilized.
Life-course
perspective
This approach highlights the gathered impact of experiences
covering the whole lifespan in recognizing and understanding the nurturing of
health and the beginning of sickness. The environmental conditions in which
individual lives are having an accumulated impact on increasing or decreasing
the chances of diseases, containing heart diseases and stroke. Furthermore,
studies were conducted for the type 2 diabetes which showed that unfavorable
economic and civil conditions make an individual prone to this disorder.
Moreover, Hertzman outlined three health impacting which are
related to the life-course perspective. Among which concealed effects are
biological or developmental experiences of early life which influences the
well-being of the person later in life. An authentic predictor of events of
cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, which evolves later in life, is
low birth weight. Moreover, deprivation in the nutrition during the period of
being young has a prolonging effect on the health.
Closing the gap
Closing the gap is a strategy proposed by the government
which has an objective of reducing the trouble among Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people regarding their longevity, child mortality, and their
access to initial education, academic achievements and job outcomes. Local
Australians who are living in underprivileged communities have to travel long
distances for reaching hospitals or medical assistance. Due to that, these
people are getting a lower standard of medical facilities and their life
expectancy is also short.
The expanding gap in the life expectancy among rural
Australians and urban Australians is due to the availability of 24/7 access to
health care and increasing medical facilities. It was stated by an article in
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, (2014) development of
these facilities in rural areas of Australia will help in closing this gap.
Decreased life expectancy and deficient health outcomes in Indigenous Australians
are also due to colonization. Moreover, a major part of this gap is due to the
discrepancy in the social determinants of the well-being of Australians. These
determinants are impacting the health of individuals and are able to influence
the interaction of a person with medical facilities and services. For example,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults are having a lesser chance of
smoking if they have finished their education and are employed with higher
incomes. In addition to that, a greater level of education is also linked with
the healthier choices and enhanced literacy of health.
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