Indigenous Health Research
Head – Dr Alex Brown
The work of Alex and his team focuses on the deadly cluster of heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease in a community where these health problems are endemic. While cardiovascular disease is accepted as the greatest killer of Australians, many people don't realise that there exists a frightening disparity in the Aboriginal community, where mortality rates from disease are three times the rate of the rest of the population. Life expectancy is 20 years less than in white Australia and the median age of death for the nation's Indigenous community is just a little over 50 years.
Baker IDI Central Australia is part of Baker IDI's commitment to improving the quality of life of communities hardest hit by heart disease and diabetes, wherever they are. The health disadvantage of Indigenous Australians represents one of Australia's most enduring social and health divides. Alex and his team are working towards establishing a long-term, research-led, strategic approach to reducing the burden of vascular disease in the geographical heart of the country.
Baker IDI Central Australia is a departure from other approaches to improving health in Aboriginal communities: those approaches have regularly alienated people by undertaking research "on communities". The team is fiercely committed to research that works with communities and provides clinical services that meet their needs while better understanding the full scope of the disease burden within them.
The program of research in Central Australia currently spans measurement of the burden of heart disease and related conditions, assessing the performance of health care systems in providing care for indigenous people with heart disease, the contribution of risk factors to heart disease, understanding the barriers to care experienced by Indigenous people when trying to access cardiac services, and the interplay of depression, stress and heart disease in indigenous men. These baseline research projects have laid the foundations for service development and trials of new interventions to reduce the burden of, and adverse outcomes from, heart disease in Aboriginal people.
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