MBBS Year 1 Aboriginal Health Assignment 2008
Investigate the extent of otitis media, and in particular Chronic Suppurative Otitis Media (CSOM), in Aboriginal children in Australia
Compare the rates of CSOM in Aboriginal children with non-Aboriginal children in Australia.
Explain the discrepancy between these two groups by looking in particular at the social positioning (social structure, social marginalisation and social exclusion) of Aboriginal children in Australian society.
Discuss why the prevalence of Otitis Media and its possible consequences are of concern in Aboriginal children. |
Latest update July 2008 by Mick Draper
Statistics
Australian Bureau of Statistics web site Enter otitis (or perhaps chronic suppurative otitis media, or csom) to find publications that will give you statistical information on this condition.
You may also want to look at other documents relating to Aboriginal Australians.
The ABS has material at
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/web+pages/statistics?opendocument
You might also like to look through the topics by
Clicking on Statistics on the ABS home
Clicking on By Topic
Then on Health under Population/People
Then on Indigenous Health
There are a lot of documents you can choose from.
Databases
There are two useful databases for finding journal articles.
PubMed
This is an international database with more than 18 million citations to articles on health and life sciences topics.
Access to PubMed
1 Uni of Adelaide Library Home
Click on the link to PubMed in the right hand sidebar on the Library home
2 Uni of Adelaide Library Catalogue
Type pubmed into the Search box of the catalogue.
Click on the Search button.
Click on the link to PubMed.
Click on the Link to e-Resource.
3 Using Uni of Adelaide Library Database Sites
Click on Health Sciences.
On the following screen scroll down to PubMed (Databases are in alphabetical order)
Click on the link.
The PubMed Screen appears.
How to Use PubMed to Find Journal Articles
Click on MeSH Database in the side bar on the left of the screen.
This will take you to the Medical Subject Heading screen.
This is the subject index for PubMed.
You need to search for Australian aborigines.
This has to be done in two steps.
Step 1
Type oceanic ancestry group into the MeSH Search box.
This is the Medical Subject Heading for a number of indigenous groups.
Click on the Go button.
Click in the box to the left of the term.
A tick will appear.
Click on the Send to pull down menu.
Click on Search Box with AND.
The Medical Subject Heading will appear in the PubMed Search box.
Step 2
Clear oceanic ancestry group from the MeSH search box, but not from the PubMed Search box.
Type in australia
Click on the Go button.
Click in the box to the left of Australia, again a tick will appear.
Click on the Send to pull down menu.
Click on Search Box with AND.
This subject heading will appear in the PubMed search box.
Now you need to add a subject heading for otitis.
Clear australia from the MeSH search box and type suppurative otitis media.
Notice that PubMed uses an inverted MeSH.
Follow the same procedure as above to add otitis to the PubMed search box.
Click on the Search PubMed button.
The results of your search appear in PubMed as citations to journal articles.
The citations are presented in a summary format that is useful for quick scanning.
To read the abstracts of articles click on the Display pull down menu.
Click on Abstract.
The citations will (mostly) appear with abstracts.
If there is a Uni of Adelaide Online icon attached to the citation you can view the article in full text by clicking on the icon.
If you find a citation from your search that looks like it might be useful, and you want to find other similar citations,
click on Related Articles at the top right of the citation.
PubMed runs an algorithm based on MeSH, title words, and words in the abstracts.
This will produce a set of citations related to the 'parent' citation.
The parent record appears first in the list followed by other citations in order of relatedness to the parent.
In this example there are 206 citations related to the parent citation.
Change the display to Abstract.
Scroll through these to find articles that are of interest.
If there is no Uni of Adelaide Online icon, check the journal title in the Uni of Adelaide Library catalogue.
Not all of our electronic journals will produce an online icon, and none of our print journals do.
If you need more help with searching you can try this PubMed tutorial given to first year Dental School students.
It goes into more detail and may help you find more citations.
AustHealth
AustHealth looks different from PubMed but uses the same Medical Subject Headings.
You can get access to Austhealth using the Uni of Adelaide Library Catalogue, or the Health sciences databases as above.
Type all of your terms joined by AND into the Search box.
e.g. oceanic ancestry group AND australia AND suppurative otitis media
Click on the Search button.
Click on links to full text.
If there isn't a link to full text you'll need to click on Check Fulltext options
You'll find a lot more citations if you search Austhealth using
aborigin* AND otitis
You'll need to keep in mind that there was a large increase in the number of people claiming to be of aboriginal descent in recent census results. Should you also think about whether there has been a change in the number of people diagnosed with some conditions because of changed definitions of diseases, screening, diagnostics tests, access to medical services etc?
Other Sources
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health
Northern Territory National Emergency Response - Questions and Answers
From the Australian Dept of Health and Ageing
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health performance framework 2006 report: detailed analyses
Includes information on otitis as well as background information. From Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
eMJA
The electronic version of Medical journal of Australia
Search for chronic suppurative otitis media
The health and welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 2008
This document includes some specific information on otitis as well as background information on health and welfare
From the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
Indigenous EarInfoNet Information on ears and health in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Recent developments in the collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and welfare statistics 2005
A social health atlas of Australia 2nd edition volume 1
Social Health Atlas of South Australia (Online), 2008
Gray, Dennis 2005. Indigenous health : the perptuation of inequality (In) Second opinion : an introduction to health sociology / edited by John Germov, 3rd ed., ch. 6, pp. 111-128.
Other information on indigenous health is available at
Aboriginal and Other Indigenous People's Health compiled by the Public Health Research Librarian Maureen Bell
but please don't ask her for help unless you really can't find
Mick Draper Level 3 of Barr Smith Library
830 35335
michael.draper@adelaide.edu.au
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