Closing the Gap matters
Aboriginal men and women have a life expectancy on average 10 years lower than non-Indigenous Australians. They are also more likely to be burdened with chronic disease. In addition, compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people experience poor outcomes in relation to access to housing, employment and health care.
Closing the Gap aims to reduce disadvantages among Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples in areas including child mortality, childhood education, life expectancy, and health and wellbeing.
Increasing life expectancy is a health equity and human rights issue and is central to the empowerment of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Quality improvement activities for your practice team
NWMPHN is committed to improving these health outcomes in our area. We understand that Aboriginal and/or Torres strait islander people access mainstream primary care service providers as well as Aboriginal health services for their care, so we have developed a number of new quality improvement (QI) activities to assist your practice team to work more closely with your First Nations patients to improve health and wellbeing.
These are easy to use and can be adapted to the needs of your practice and patients.
You can find them here:
- Improve identification in general practice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- Increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients with a current 715 health check
- Increase the number of GP management plans and team care arrangements for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients with a chronic disease
- Increase the number of absolute cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients
- Increase the number of staff who have completed an accredited cultural awareness and safety training in your practice
By using these QI templates you and your practice team can establish practical ways to assist with Closing the Gap.
Feedback
We want to hear from you on how these activities worked, and how they might be improved. We invite you to share anonymised case studies with us, which might be published on our website, or in our e-news, to help spread the word about our Closing the Gap Qi activities.
Need to complete Cultural Awareness Training to claim the Indigenous Health Practice Incentive Payment? NWMPHN is supporting 25 non-RACGP members to compliant complete online training free of charge. If you are interested please submit an Expression of Interest. Applications close at 5pm AEST on Friday, 28 July 2023.
