BACKGROUND The poor health status of Australia's indigenous population is reflected in relatively high mortality rates from almost all causes, including preventable causes such as cervical cancer, where the rate is six to eight times that of non-Aboriginal women. However, there is little information on the geographical distribution of risk, an important issue for service deployment. This study ...

In Queensland, Aboriginal nurses are limited in number in comparison to the mainstream nursing workforce. More Aboriginal registered nurses are needed to cater for Aboriginal patients in our Australian healthcare system in view of today's burgeoning Indigenous health crisis. It is a foregone conclusion that Aboriginal nurses are the most suitable nurses to provide optimal cross cultural care fo...

Fifteen Central Australian Aboriginal adults (8 patients, 7 colleagues) were presented with a culturally modified version of Flavell's 'stream of consciousness' experiment (pictures of persons with empty or 'busy' thought-bubbles, and an invitation to assign a picture to the mental state of a second experimenter seen reading or sitting quietly). Only 4 people assigned the empty thought bubble t...

AIMS To document gastroenteritis hospitalisations of the 1995-96 cohort of infants born in Western Australia to mid-2002, and to assess factors associated with their hospitalisations and readmissions. METHODS Retrospective analysis of the State's hospitalisation data, Midwives' Notification of Births data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics mortality data and clinical and demographic informa...

BACKGROUND To determine the prevalence of trachoma and diabetes-related eye disease within the adult Aboriginal population screened by the South Australian Eye Health Program between 1999 and 2004 inclusive. METHODS The South Australian Eye Health Program visited 22 Aboriginal communities in remote South Australia. Visiting ophthalmologists and optometrists systematically collected data on th...

Aboriginal burning in Australia has long been assumed to be a "resource management" strategy, but no quantitative tests of this hypothesis have ever been conducted. We combine ethnographic observations of contemporary Aboriginal hunting and burning with satellite image analysis of anthropogenic and natural landscape structure to demonstrate the processes through which Aboriginal burning shapes ...