"Close the Gap" - Where are we?

In 2007 Closing the Gap Coalition of Commonwealth, State and Local Government with community based agencies like Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community based Health Services, Oxfam and Australian Red Cross, a plan was drafted looking at improving Indigenous Health Crisis. In five years has anything improved?

The "Close the Gap" campaign proved to be popular with then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signing off and looking at improving Indigenous Health Policy.

This year (2011) the focus is about building an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health work force, with medical, nursing, allied health and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health-workers.

Adrian Hepi Senior Health-worker (007) Acting Team Leader Mornington Island talks about what closing the gap means to him and how we can achieve this.


Closing the Gap is a great opportunity for all Australians to be involved and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’s to lower the gap in health issues, increase life expectancy and employment opportunities.

Tell us what is working really well in your community to help Close the Gap and what actions can we take at a community level.

We welcome discussion and comments on this topic.

Northern Territory Emergency Response - What was the emergency?

For Indigenous Australians as well as many other minority groups, there is great frustration when we witness the nation’s best journalists fail to ask the begging question. Groups who are poorly represented in society don’t just lack the voice to answer questions, but also to ask them. As citizens, the contract that we have with the fourth estate (the media) is that they will give voice to those issues that cry out for answers. Unfortunately, the truth of the fourth estate is that their primary responsibility is to generate income, rather than to seek the truth.

Through this edition of Dialog, Dr. Louis Peachey, founding president of Australian Indigenous Doctors Association (AIDA), Former Medical Educator at MICRRH, and currently a Senior Medical Officer at Atherton District Hospital wishes to ask two simple questions about the Northern Territory Emergency Response of 2007.



We welcome your constructive comments on this topic. We ask that people participating in this forum treat each other respectfully in the interests of rational dialogue and discussion.

Indigenous Health: Birthing on Country

"The birthing experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is fundamentally culturally different from that of non-Indigenous women. Birthing is and continues to be in some communities a cultural rite of passage where knowledge, practices and beliefs are transferred from older to younger women, identity and links are established to land and connections with country are shared and celebrated."
- Submission from Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association to Maternity Services Review, '09.

Catrina Felton-Busch, former Indigenous Studies Coordinator at MICRRH shares her own experiences and expresses her views on the topic in the following video.


We welcome discussion and comments on this topic.
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