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IBARW
I -- okay, I always feel very weird about expressing opinions about issues of race (being hyper-aware of my crushing UPPER MIDDLE CLASS WHITE GIRL privilege) because I feel ignorant about pretty much everything. So I enjoy reading everyone else's links, but never feel that I have anything to contribute.
However, recently in my course we've had a lot of curriculum material regarding Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander* health care/public health standards, and this week's PBL case is otitis media and bacterial pneumonia in an indigenous toddler from a remote community, so for my measly contribution to IBARW I thought I might share a handful of statistics highlighting how absolutely dreadful the differences are. Because before coming to Sydney -- which has a relatively high indigenous population for an urban centre, especially when compared to Canberra -- I knew very little about this, and what opinions I did hold were, quite probably, racist to some degree. They probably still are! But I'm working on it. And this might be something that non-Aussies don't know a whole lot about either, so...consciousness-raising, I guess, even if not strictly BA any R.
(There were some great stats in today's lecture but the woman who spoke is unfortunately terrible at putting her slides up online, so what we have here is...what I can remember straight off the bat, which isn't much. There's a really good AIHW report on the whole issue here, if anyone wants to find out more, but right now I am going to dash this off and then...go back to studying.)
Some facts: A&TSI people are three times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, and one-third of them develop type 2 diabetes by their forties. There is a 17 year difference in life expectancy between indigenous & non-indigenous Australians. Babies of indigenous mothers are twice as likely to be of low birthweight. There are enormous problems with regards to nutrition, education, housing, renal health, unemployment, youth suicide, substance abuse -- pretty much everything you could think of.
So yeah, I have some opinions here. My opinions are mostly along the lines of THIS IS A FUCKING OUTRAGE.
So far this year I've met & talked to the handful of Aboriginal postgrad girls here at college, and even found myself taking a clinical history from Chicka Dixon, one of the people involved in setting up the Tent Embassy (which is the one Aboriginal issue that Canberrans DO know about). But I still don't feel like I know nearly enough about, well, anything. A lot of people from my course do their electives in developing countries, but I'm thinking about doing half of mine somewhere within my own country; probably Alice Springs, which is the urban centre for hundreds of remote communities. Because for a first-world country with a small population, we have an alarming amount of third-world health problems among the original inhabitants of the land.
*For anyone not aware: the Torres Strait Islands are just north of the tip of Queensland, and their indigenous people are generally considered to be a separate group to mainland Aborigines.
However, recently in my course we've had a lot of curriculum material regarding Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander* health care/public health standards, and this week's PBL case is otitis media and bacterial pneumonia in an indigenous toddler from a remote community, so for my measly contribution to IBARW I thought I might share a handful of statistics highlighting how absolutely dreadful the differences are. Because before coming to Sydney -- which has a relatively high indigenous population for an urban centre, especially when compared to Canberra -- I knew very little about this, and what opinions I did hold were, quite probably, racist to some degree. They probably still are! But I'm working on it. And this might be something that non-Aussies don't know a whole lot about either, so...consciousness-raising, I guess, even if not strictly BA any R.
(There were some great stats in today's lecture but the woman who spoke is unfortunately terrible at putting her slides up online, so what we have here is...what I can remember straight off the bat, which isn't much. There's a really good AIHW report on the whole issue here, if anyone wants to find out more, but right now I am going to dash this off and then...go back to studying.)
Some facts: A&TSI people are three times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, and one-third of them develop type 2 diabetes by their forties. There is a 17 year difference in life expectancy between indigenous & non-indigenous Australians. Babies of indigenous mothers are twice as likely to be of low birthweight. There are enormous problems with regards to nutrition, education, housing, renal health, unemployment, youth suicide, substance abuse -- pretty much everything you could think of.
So yeah, I have some opinions here. My opinions are mostly along the lines of THIS IS A FUCKING OUTRAGE.
So far this year I've met & talked to the handful of Aboriginal postgrad girls here at college, and even found myself taking a clinical history from Chicka Dixon, one of the people involved in setting up the Tent Embassy (which is the one Aboriginal issue that Canberrans DO know about). But I still don't feel like I know nearly enough about, well, anything. A lot of people from my course do their electives in developing countries, but I'm thinking about doing half of mine somewhere within my own country; probably Alice Springs, which is the urban centre for hundreds of remote communities. Because for a first-world country with a small population, we have an alarming amount of third-world health problems among the original inhabitants of the land.
*For anyone not aware: the Torres Strait Islands are just north of the tip of Queensland, and their indigenous people are generally considered to be a separate group to mainland Aborigines.