Teaming up to bridge the gap - how integrated primary care is improving the health of Indigenous communities in western NSW

Dr Ross Lamplugh, Ochre Health, Australia*

Brewarrina is one of Australia’s most remote and disadvantaged towns (population 2,000, 63% Aboriginal, 760km northwest of Sydney).

Brewarrina is a textbook example of the challenge facing those trying to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Limited education, unemployment rate over 12% and low income create severe disadvantage.

Local healthcare professionals have developed an integrated, innovative program to help hundreds of Indigenous people address their chronic health issues.

Results from the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives have demonstrated the success of this integrated program, with Brewarrina achieving amongst the greatest improvements from baseline in Australia. By month 10 some health markers had actually improved to be better than Australian averages. For example, patients with CVD achieving blood pressure less than 140/90 went from 23% to 52% (Collaborative average moved from 35% to 49%).

Collaboratives’ data in Coonamble has confirmed similar results from quality integrated primary care – with the percentage of diabetic patients with a last recorded BP of <= 130/80 rising from 32% to 43% over 11 months (NSW average 38%).

An integrated diabetic initiative in Bourke has seen the clinical management of diabetes markedly improved with a reduction in average HbA1c from 8.7 to 7.8 (or 33% toward normal of 6.0) over 4 years.

This presentation will briefly discuss these results and the programs which produced them.

Click the forward and back buttons (bottom right hand corner) on the powerpoint slide below to manually move through the slides.

Click the play button below to listen to the audio of the presentation.