Investigators: Carrington Shepherd, Fiona Stanley
This project aims to identify factors related to, and those which predict, the development of resilience and wellbeing in Indigenous youth. It will examine the development of resilience and wellbeing in Indigenous youth; compare Indigenous youth's self-assessment of their resilience and wellbeing between low and high risk cohorts; and study how community services develop youth wellbeing and resilience. Our work will provide currently lacking knowledge to inform effective service development and resource allocation to support families and to improve infant and child health outcomes.
Disparities in health between Aboriginal people and other Australians begin early in life, with infant and child mortality rates and hospitalisation rates approximately twice those of non-Aboriginal Australians. Without information on health and illness pathways and the factors that drive these it is unlikely that effective programs to improve Aboriginal health will be possible. Identification of how Aboriginal health outcomes vary across different regions and across families with different characteristics can potentially inform the development and delivery of targeted services, helping children to ‘defy the odds’ and thrive.
To date, most studies have only concentrated on the individual without assessment of the contexts from which risk arises; these include: family environment (including inter-generational risks), the wider community, and access to health and family services. Our study will provide currently lacking knowledge to inform effective service development to support families by identifying determinants of infant and child health outcomes using whole-of population linked health and genealogical data from multigenerational Aboriginal families in Western Australia (WA) from 1980 to 2013, complimented with specifically-collected data from existing health and social services.
The study aims to: (1) determine the risk and protective factors for Aboriginal infant and childhood mortality and morbidity that derive from the perinatal period and from maternal and grand-maternal social and medical history; (2) investigate geographic variation in infant and childhood mortality and morbidity and identify specific community-level characteristics that are impacting the disease burden; and (3) explore the scope and reach of existing community and State-run programs/services targeted towards health and social wellbeing of Aboriginal children and families and assess the impact of these services on infant and childhood mortality and morbidity in regions of WA.
External collaborators:
- David Preen, Jocelyn Jones (University of Western Australia)
- Bridgette McNamara, Sandra Eades, Lina Gubhaju, Ibrahima Diouf (Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute Holdings Limited)
- Louisa Jorm (University of New South Wales)
- Grace Joshy (Australian National University)
- Daniel McAullay (Edith Cowan University)
- James Ward (South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute)
- Stephen Ball (Curtin University of Technology)
- Anne Marie McHugh (Department of Health WA)