PDHPE Assessment Task 2
Health Report

Question 1.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders experience many health inequities compared to non-Indigenous Australians, these include:

• Lower life expectancy: Indigenous Australians have lower life expectancy than non-Indigenous Australians. For example: Indigenous boys born between 2010 and 2012 can expect to live to 69.1 years and Indigenous girls to 73.7 years compared with 79.7 for non-Indigenous boys and 83.1 for non-Indigenous girls.
• Higher hospitalisations: Indigenous Australians have higher hospitalisation rates compared to non-Indigenous Australians due to their poorer health status. For example: Indigenous Australians were hospitalised for potentially preventable conditions nearly 4 times as often as non-Indigenous Australians between July 2010 and June 2012.
• More likely to smoke: Indigenous Australians are more likely to take part in health risk behaviors such as smoking, which contributes to poorer health status. For example: Two out of 5 Indigenous Australians aged 15 and over (41%) were current daily smokers in 2012–13, which, after adjusting for age, was more than twice the rate of smoking among non-Indigenous Australians in 2011–12.
• Lower rates of physical activity: Physical inactivity rates are significantly higher in the Indigenous population than in the non-Indigenous population. For example: About 3 in 5 Indigenous Australians aged 18 and over (62%) reported no or low-level physical activity, which was 10% higher than the rate among non-Indigenous Australians.

Question 2.

Australia is one of the healthiest countries in the world; however, Australia’s population still experiences a range of health problems. The challenge for the Australian government is to