grants to stimulate healthy aging among Aboriginal people

"Ultimately, parity in health outcomes is the only acceptable goal, and this funding will help to achieve it."

The $ 5.6 million investment, which will coincide with the NAIDOC week, will be spread over research projects conducted in universities in four states and will cover areas such as general medicine, care of the elderly , chronic diseases and cancer.

It will include a $ 1.2 million grant to NSW Cancer Institute Executive Director David Currow to explain why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are more likely to develop cancers that have health outcomes more serious and more likely to develop these cancers at an earlier age.

"In recent decades, we have probably been a bit too simplistic in our thinking," said Professor Currow.

"It's an opportunity, especially using linked datasets, to begin to expose as much detail as possible of some of these differences … and thus improve cancer outcomes."

Associate Professor Edward Strivens of James Cook University will spend $ 1.1 million to work with communities on Torres Strait Island to develop a framework for aging in good health, in a global approach.

The incidence of dementia was three to five times higher among Aboriginal communities and the Torres Strait Islands. Dr. Strivens said the disease was more likely to occur in people with a history of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

His team would work with communities in the Strait of Torres on strategies to reduce the incidence of these diseases, such as stimulating the seafood component of their diet.

"It could be seafood, exercise, island dancing, which is a fantastic example of community engagement and interestingly exercises people's cognitive and physical skills," he said. said Dr. Strivens.

The federal government's 2019 report, Closing the Gap, revealed that efforts to increase the life expectancy of Aboriginal peoples were not on the right track. Aboriginal men born between 2015 and 2017 would die 8.6 years earlier than non-Aboriginal men and Aboriginal women who may die. 7.8 years earlier.

The life expectancy of Aboriginal people was increasing faster than that of non-Aboriginal people, but improvements were insufficient to achieve the goal of closing the gap by 2031.

Circulatory disease, followed by cancer, was the leading cause of death.