Closing The Gap - Child Mortality Essay.

This essay extends the discussion around the Closing the Gap target and Indigenous health issues from your group assignment. There may be some overlap between the two assignments, however this is an individual written essay that needs to contain your own original work.

Your essay should address the following:

- Introduce the target and explain why it is important for health.
- Provide an in-depth discussion about whether the target is on track, and include relevant statistics that support your argument.
- Discuss what strategies have been utilised and are currently being utilised to ensure the target is met.
- Provide at least one suggestion (supported by empirical research) for what could be done to help the target be met (if it is not on track) or keep it on track in the future (if it is on track).

We are asking you to consider what strategy you might implement, given unlimited resources, to ensure your ‘Closing the Gap’ target is met.

Closing the gap is an initiative started by the government of Australia in order to address the issues of education, health, and racism which are faced by indigenous Australians. It is a social justice campaign which has been established by the government in order to achieve health equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by 2030 (Healthinfonet, 2018). In Australia, the Aboriginal people face a large number of health-related issues for a long time. By implementing the Closing the Gap policy, the government focused on providing health benefits to the indigenous people in order to address the health issues face by them. Child mortality is one of the key issues included in closing the gap policy. This report will focus on evaluating whether the target set by the government in closing the gap policy is on track and existing strategies will be evaluated as well. Various suggestions will be included in the report as well in order to meet the targets set by the government in closing the gap policy.

Closing the gap policy was initiated by the government on 20^th December 2007and it was focused on eliminating the gap between the life expectancy between non-indigenous and aboriginal people. In this policy, six ambitious targets were set by the government in areas including education, employment, and health. The policy was implemented in order to recognise the disadvantages which indigenous people face in Australia and terminate the same (Morgan, 2012). A long-term and generational commitment are made by the government which is focused on improving the facilities of healthy homes, schools, early childhood, schooling, safe communities, and others. The policy targeted to halve the gap of child mortality between the indigenous and non-indigenous children by 2018. The policy has also targeted to completely close the gap between child mortality by 2031. The policy is focused towards giving a healthy and safe start to live of indigenous children which given them a greater chance to succeed at school and get more opportunities in life. Reduced child mortality rates build a strong foundation which assists them in achieving better health and social outcomes (Deravin, Francis & Anderson, 2018). Although the rate of child mortality rate has declined significantly between 1998 and 2016, however, the process of decline has been slowed down since closing the gap policy is implemented by the government in 2008.

In closing the gap policy, the government set a target that the rate will be reduced to half by 2018. It was targeted that the gap in the child mortality rate of indigenous and non-indigenous children will be eliminated completely by 2031. According to the data, the mortality rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are under five years has reduced between 2008 and 2016 (Thurber & Jones, 2018). During this period, the infant rate has decreased by around 66.7 percent based on which the gap is narrowed by 84.5 percent. In the case of children in early childhood (1-4 year old), the mortality rate has been fluctuating, and it has been reduced by 21.6 percent (Australian Government, 2018). The mortality rate for non-indigenous children has reduced in this period as well. However, it will be difficult for the government to close the gap in the mortality rate if the non-indigenous rate continued to decrease faster. The data has shown that the initiatives taken by the government are working, and they assist in reducing the mortality rate of indigenous children. The government will face difficulties in delivering upon its promises in case the rate of non-indigenous child mortality is continued to decrease. Although progress can be seen based on the data provided by the government, however, the progress has been continuously slowing down which makes the achievability of targets more difficult (Marmot, 2017). The target set by the government to halve the gap of mortality rate by 2018 has been met, and the next target is on track as well. However, the progress is slow due to which the government can face difficulties in achieving its target which is set for 2031 to close the gap in child mortality rate of indigenous and non-indigenous children.

Evaluation of the Target

In case the government only focuses on the ‘gap’, then it can lose sight of the progress of aboriginal people. Indigenous people make up around 10 percent of the total children die in Australia despite the fact that they make up around 3 percent of the total population. In order to reduce the indigenous children mortality rates, the government has started engaging in the process of community development to uplift the lives of Aboriginal people (Gannon, 2018). The Indigenous Early Childhood Development National Partnership Agreement is a good example. It is a health performance indicator which assists the government in tracking whether the initiatives taken by it are working effectively to reduce the number of indigenous children deaths in Australia. The government has started providing better health plans and treatments to indigenous people in hospitals. Many initiatives have been introduced for those Aboriginal people who did not have the resources to visit a hospital. The government supports many non-profit organisations that work to providing health care benefits to indigenous people (Angell, Eades & Jan, 2017). Many employment and education facilities are provided by the government to indigenous people in order to reduce the rate of child mortality. The engagement with the Aboriginal communities has increased substantially in the past decade. Based on the engagement, the government focuses on providing better healthcare facilities by setting up camps and providing free medical facilities to Aboriginal people (Ritte et al., 2017). These initiatives have assisted in reduces the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children mortality rate between the period of 2008 and 2018.

In order to ensure that the progress in reducing of indigenous child mortality rates remain on the track, it is important that the government improves its policies to improve the healthcare facilities of indigenous people. Various recommendations are given below which can assist the government to keep on track and achieve its target set for 2031. Perinatal conditions account for 43.5 percent of the indigenous deaths of children between the ages of 1 to 4 years over the period of 2012 to 2016 (Higgins, Clarke & Conifer, 2018). Therefore, it is important that better medical facilities are given to indigenous mothers while they were pregnant. The awareness regarding key health issues and solutions to deal with them should spread among Aboriginal people. It will assist in reducing the death of children which occurs due to perinatal conditions. Another key issue is that most indigenous people live in remote areas which make it difficult for the government to provide them better healthcare facilities. In order to address this issue, the government should set up camps for Aboriginal people to ensure that they receive proper medical facilities. Furthermore, the government should focus on key areas rather than taking actions aimlessly. For example, between the period of 2002-06 and 2008-11, the death of children which caused due to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was reduced by half. This drop in rate is responsible for a quarter of the total decline in the number of death of children. On the other hand, there has been less progress in other causes of childhood deaths which include injury, poisoning, respiratory diseases, and others (Moller et al., 2017). Therefore, the government should focus on implementing policies in order to address these issues to ensure that the target to close the gap by 2031 remains on the track.

Strategies to Achieve the Target

Based on the above conclusion, it can be concluded that closing the gap policy is implemented by the government in order to eliminate the disadvantages faced by Aboriginal people in Australia. One of the key targets for this policy is to reduce the gap between mortality rates of indigenous and non-indigenous children by 2031 and halve the gap by 2018. Currently, these targets are on track since the rate of the death of indigenous children has been reduced significantly as reported by the government. The mortality rate has reduced due to various initiatives which are started by the government in order to tackle the issue of indigenous children mortality. The engagement with local communities has increased in order to increase awareness and healthcare facilities have improved as well. However, it will be difficult for the government to remain on the track and achieve the target set in 2031 if the strategies are not improved by the government. It is suggested that the government should increase the investment in the healthcare facilities in remote areas where the population of indigenous people is high. It is also suggested that the government should issue such as injury and diseases to reduce the rate of indigenous children mortality.

References

Angell, B., Eades, S., & Jan, S. (2017). To Close the Gap we need to identify the best (and worst) buys in Indigenous health. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 41(3), 224-226.

Australian Government. (2018). Infancy and Early Childhood. Retrieved from https://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/infancy-and-early-childhood

Deravin, L., Francis, K., & Anderson, J. (2018). Closing the gap in Indigenous health inequity–Is it making a difference?. International nursing review, doi: 10.1111/inr.12436.

Gannon, M. (2018). Indigenous health: Closing the gap-10 year review. Australian Medicine, 30(3), 25.

Healthinfonet. (2018) History of Closing the Gap. Retrieved from https://healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/learn/health-system/closing-the-gap/history-of-closing-the-gap/

Higgins, I., Clarke, M. & Conifer, D. (2018). Closing the Gap: Only three of seven targets on track, but growing signs of improvement. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-12/only-three-of-seven-closing-the-gap-targets-on-track-a-decade-on/9420838

Marmot, M. (2017). Closing the health gap. Scandinavian journal of public health, 45(7), 723-731.

Moller, H., Falster, K., Ivers, R., Falster, M. O., Clapham, K., & Jorm, L. (2017). Closing the Aboriginal child injury gap: targets for injury prevention. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 41(1), 8-14.

Morgan, M. (2012). Closing the Gap: Halving Indigenous child mortality and two other targets on track. Retrieved from https://www.sbs.com.au/news/closing-the-gap-halving-indigenous-child-mortality-and-two-other-targets-on-track

Ritte, R., Freemantle, J., Mensah, F., Sullivan, M., Chang, S., & Read, A. (2017). Using population data linkage to make the invisible, visible: patterns and trends in mortality for Victorian born Aboriginal compared with non-Indigenous Victorian infants. International Journal of Population Data Science, 1(1).

Thurber, K. & Jones, R. (2018). Closing the Gap in child mortality: Ten years on. Retrieved from https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2018/02/13/closing-gap-child-mortality-ten-years