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Child Care Essay

Decent Essays

The need for priority direction
‘Improving the physical health of young Australians’ (ARACY 2014) has been established as one of the priority directions to achieve good physical health and wellbeing for all Australian children. Improving Indigenous young people’s physical health can not only alleviate disease burden of their current health, but also set the stage for their future health and wellbeing. Youth is crucial for physical, cognitive, social and moral development (Resnick et.al 2012). Functional development, such as visual process and language acquisition, requires sensory stimulations during the ‘critical period’ and ‘sensitive period’ in the first 5 years of life (Hensch 2005). Unequal distribution of diseases in Indigenous …show more content…

Furthermore, Australian Indigenous children are assets of Australia, improving their physical health lays a significant foundation to the population health and the success for future public health (Sawyer et al. 2012). As the Indigenous Australian population has a younger age structure than non-Indigenous one (ABS 2016b), targeting this population is targeting the most affected age group, which will bring social and economic benefits in current and future generations (Patton et al. 2016). Failure to address young Indigenous population’s health would further widen the existing health inequality, resulting in social injustice and instability (Resnick et al. 2012). Thus, priority on young Indigenous Australians’ physical health must been urged in light of these concerns.

The selected determinants of Indigenous young Australians’ physical health

Colonisation
A wide range of determinants, such as nutrition and education, affect Indigenous young Australians’ physical health. However, and further, the causes of health disparities are linked to the unique Indigenous culture that was influenced by the history of colonisation. Colonisation led to the loss of land and the habitats of the local food sources upon which Indigenous people traditionally relied (Gracey & King 2009). More importantly, the process of colonisation reconstructed the

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