The Medical journal of Australia
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In the next Australian Health Survey, Indigenous people under 18 years of age will be excluded from direct clinical measurements and laboratory tests. Indigenous people of all ages were to be excluded from the opportunity, offered to other Australians, to donate blood and urine samples to a national repository. This component has now been abandoned for the whole cohort. This sets perilous precedents of exclusion from opportunities available to all other Australians, and deprives the medical community of information that could inform strategies to improve health profiles and outcomes in this seriously disadvantaged group.
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Australia's efforts to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer are not as successful for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as they are for other Australians. There is a need for a nationally coordinated, collaborative, priority-driven research effort to better understand what works, and we need to implement that knowledge. All aspects of the process must involve genuine Indigenous leadership and participation.
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To explore attitudes to pregnancy and parenthood among a group of Indigenous young people in Townsville, Australia. ⋯ Accurate parenting information may be necessary to address unrealistic views about parenting among Indigenous young people. Young Indigenous parents often come from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds, and becoming a parent may be the impetus for positive change.
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To assess the number and characteristics of potentially harmful incidents occurring during placement of medical students in remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. ⋯ One in six students experienced a potentially harmful incident during remote area placement in 2006-2007. While acknowledging the exploratory nature of this investigation and the major educational benefits that clearly arise from these placements, our findings indicate problems with clinical supervision and administration.
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To describe the trends in maternal smoking and smoking in the household for a cohort of Indigenous women followed from late pregnancy to 7 months postpartum. ⋯ While an apparent reduction in indoor exposure to tobacco smoke during the postpartum period is encouraging, this is offset by an increase in the proportion of antenatal non-smokers who subsequently reported smoking after the birth of their child. More health care service delivery and research attention needs to be directed to smoking during pregnancy and to postpartum relapse in this population.