The following text is taken from a speech delivered by BRHS CEO Robyn Hayles at the Close The Gap Day ceremony at the health service on Thursday, 17, Feb.
BRHS is proud to hold this Close The Gap gathering today to recognise the unacceptable gap between non-indigenous and indigenous population, particularly in life expectancy and health status.
Close The Gap is a campaign that started in 2007, following a report by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner in 2005.
The Social Justice report recommended a commitment to achieving equality of health status and life expectancy between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-indigenous people within 25 years.
The report also recommended a commitment to achieving equality of access to health care within 10 years. This was the aim for 2015.
Every year since that first report was published in 2005, a commitment, agreement or report has been published, aiming to close the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
In addition to Close The Gap, which is about promoting community awareness, there is Closing The Gap, a strategy and formal commitment made by all Australian governments to achieve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equality.
In 2020, a new strategy was developed called the National Agreement on Closing The Gap.
This was developed in partnership between governments and a coalition of around 50 peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled peak organisations and members.
The National Agreement marked a significant shift in the approach to the Closing The Gap strategy, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people determining what is important to them.
This National Agreement has been developed around four priority reform areas. These are:
- Shared decision making
- Building the community controlled sector
- Improving mainstream institutions
- Improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander led data
Within this, there are 16 targets to improve outcomes relating to health and wellbeing, education, employment, justice, safety, housing, land and waters, and languages.
From a health perspective, the overarching target is now to close the gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031.
So, what progress has been made?
In 2005-2007, the life expectancy at birth for Aboriginal men was 11.4 years less than non-indigenous men, and 9.6 years less for Aboriginal women.
By 2012, the gap was slightly less at 10.6 years for men and 9.5 years for women.
From 2006 to 2018, there was an improvement in life expectancy of almost 10 percent, however non-indigenous mortality rates improved at a similar rate which meant the gap has not really narrowed.
It is clear that progress needs to be faster, although there have been good things achieved.
These achievements have included reductions in smoking, improved early detection and management of chronic disease, and improvements in social determinants of health such as children reaching higher education levels.
Some changes take a long time before the improvement is seen, for example a drop in smoking rates can take 5 years to decrease heart disease and up to 30 years to impact on cancer deaths. But they do work.
As across most of the world, the impact of Covid in Australia has been significant.
The 2021 Close The Gap Day report highlighted that as of late 2020, the number of cases of Covid among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was six times lower than the rest of Australia.
This was largely seen as being as a result of health control measures put in place that were led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health leaders and the Aboriginal Community Controlled sector.
We know that protecting Mob from Covid remains an important health issue, and are very pleased to have the VACCHO van here today to provide vaccinations for people here today.
So, what are some of the things that BRHS has done?
Over the years, there have been many initiatives to improve indigenous health outcomes.
One example is the Closing the Gap Medicare co-payment program, which provides free medication for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to improve access and use of medications.
While this initiative had great intentions, it was found that patients were not always accessing these free Close the Gap medications as much as they could. The scripts had to be taken to a community pharmacy after the patient left hospital and that did not always work well.
So BRHS decided to offer the free medications from the hospital pharmacy. This remains in place today so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can leave our hospital with the medications they need, and education from our Pharmacist.
Over previous years BRHS has delivered the Lighthouse project, with a number of successful outcomes including development of local training videos to improve cultural understanding for staff, a local educational video for patients to watch during their stay in hospital, design of the blue wren and shield which is recognised as a hospital symbol that recognises local Aboriginal culture, the BRHS footprint and other artwork, the Warrawee Room for families to use, and other processes to help support Aboriginal patients in hospital and in the community.
BRHS also created the beautiful Yarning Garden outside Oncology – if you haven’t seen it yet, it is well worth a visit.
The garden is a lovely calm place for everyone to enjoy, and was designed and made by local indigenous organisations and people – even family members, including children, helped make the garden.
The garden has an indigenous theme and includes the local clan shields, indigenous plants and locally made garden furniture.
I would also like to acknowledge our staff, in particular Adrian Morgan, who supported the garden’s development in collaboration with the local community.
As the health service emerges (hopefully!) from the pandemic we continue to work with community to promote health equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.
We are investing in our staff, working to increase employment and training opportunities First Nations People, and working with local artists to create more culturally safe spaces across our organisation.
In this coming year we will work together to create a Reconciliation Action Plan, and look forward to re-connecting with Community again, for guidance and feedback, as we emerge from our Covid isolation and work together to improve the health outcomes for First Nations People.
BRHS is committed to ensuring we ‘Close The Gap’ for the all in the Gunaikurnai community.
Learn more about BRHS’ services for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community at brhs.com.au/health-services/aboriginal-torres-strait-islander-health/