Aboriginal and Other Indigenous Peoples' Health

Last update: 14 October 2009,
by Maureen Bell

I've divided this page into two sections. The first provides you with some tips on searching for material on Medline, the second section provides Australian links to web pages, reports, and other databases, and the third section contains links to material on other indigenous people's health.. The library also has a page of Aboriginal Studies resources, and you will find material on aboriginal mental health on my mental health page, in the subject bibliographies, and in the topics section.

Searching Medline

MeSH - Oceanic Ancestry Group

To search for material on Australian aboriginal people you'll need to add Australia to your search.

MeSH - Australia

Exploding this thesaurus term will search for Australia as a whole, and the individual states and territories as well, whereas if you simply search for the word "Australia*" you will miss the specific individual states.

It will be useful to search the name of the country as a word too, with appropriate truncation.

Australia*[tiab] - truncating the word will search for Australia, or Australian as words in titles of articles and abstracts.

The search formulation will need brackets to ensure that the Boolean logic is executed in the correct sequence.

PubMed Search Formulation

Using thesaurus terminology alone to search for material on Australian aboriginal health issues is not very successful in PubMed

Test the two examples below by copying and pasting them into the PubMed search box.

oceanic ancestry group[mh] AND (australia*[tiab] OR australia[mh])

Now test the search below where aborig* OR indigenous (in titles or articles or abstracts) have been added as alternatives to the thesaurus term.

(oceanic ancestry group[mh] OR aborig*[tiab] OR indigenous[tiab]) AND (australia*[tiab] OR australia[mh])

Your search results will increase dramatically, and you will find much additional, very recent material. For this topic thesaurus terminology is simply inadequate for effective searching!

To make the search more specific add terms relating to health services or specific diseases. For example at the end of the search line you could add any one of the following

AND cardiovascular diseases[mh]
AND eye diseases[mh]
AND diabetes mellitus[mh]

In PubMed the default is to explode all thesaurus terms, so you would cover specific eye diseases, cardiovascular diseases, or diabetic conditions.

Remember that if you add multiple topics you need to connect them with "OR" and bracket them to preserve the logic of your search. For example if you would like to search for eye diseases or diabetes mellitus in aboriginal people you would add

AND (eye diseases[mh] OR diabetes mellitus[mh])

to the end of your original search, leaving a space before the "AND"

Below is a search strategy for a more complex search on health services and aboriginal people. Try copying and pasting it into the PubMed search box.

(oceanic ancestry group[mh] OR aborig*[tiab] OR indigenous[tiab]) AND (australia*[tiab] OR australia[mh]) AND (health[mh] OR health care reform[mh] OR delivery of health care[mh] OR health services[mh]) AND english[lang]

Additional Databases to Search for Aboriginal Health

Meditext
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University
Bibliographic database which indexes and abstracts articles from Australian health and medical journals which are not indexed in Medline. It covers all aspects of health and medicine with an emphasis on clinical medicine and paraprofessional fields. Includes journals, conference proceedings, government reports, selected monographs and the full text of most NHMRC sessions. Contains full text for a number of publications for which there is no other full text online source available.

ATSIhealth (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Bibliography)
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Bibliography indexes published and unpublished material on indigenous health. It includes journal articles, theses, unpublished articles, government reports, conference papers, abstracts, books, book chapters, discussion and working papers and statistical documents. Records are not exhaustive and relate to health status rather than to social, historical, political or monetary aspects.

ATSIROM : Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander CD-ROM
Access restricted to staff and students of Adelaide University.
This collection of Australian database subsets indexes materials on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander concerns in education, law, public affairs, health, literature, criminology, family and society, culture and heritage, multiculturalism.

AEI-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Australian Education Index ATSI subset)
AGIS-ATSIS on ATSIROM
APAIS-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Australian Public Affairs Information Service ATSI subset)
MAIS-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Multicultural Australia and Immigration Studies ATSI subset)
AUSTLIT-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Australian Literary Database ATSI subset)
FAMILY-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Australian Family & Society Abstracts Database ATSI subset)
HERA-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Heritage Australia Information System ATSI subset)
CINCH-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Australian Criminology Database ATSI subset)
ATSIhealth-ATSIS on ATSIROM : (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health)

Australian Resources

Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia Inc. : Information

(AIHW) Indigenous Australians
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare portal, which includes Indigenous Publications

Australian Indigenous HealthInfonet
The work of the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet is undertaken currently by a small part-time team comprising health researchers, multimedia staff and a librarian based at Edith Cowan University in Perth and an Indigenous Project Officer in Brisbane, assisted by an extensive Australia-wide network of HealthInfoNet Consultants. The site contains a wealth of information including the full text of many government documents.

A Chartbook of the Health and Wellbeing Status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in South Australia
Published December 2006 by the South Australian Department of Health Population Research and Outcome Studies Unit.

A Comparative Overview of Aboriginal Health in Western Australia
By J Watson, VB Ejueyitsi, and JP Codde. Epidemiology Occasional paper, No. 15, December 2001. Perth, Department of Health, Western Australia.

Culture Training Manual for Medical Workers in Aboriginal Communities
By Gordon O'Brien & Daniel Plooij, School of Social Sciences, Flinders University, South Australia, 1973 Converted to hypertext 1995 by Dr Hugh Nelson.

Department of Health and Ageing - Publications - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health
Full text of a large number of Australian government publications relating to aboriginal health issues.

Djiadi No. 1.1 Muru Marri Monograph Series
Revised Monograph of the Inaugural Indigenous Health Unit Research Day 2004. Edited by Dr L Jackson Pulver and Mr D McDermott. The Muru Marri Indigenous Health Unit, is part of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of NSW.

eMJA: Articles on Aboriginal health
A collection of articles on this subject from the Medical Journal of Australia.

Environmental Health Handbook: A Practical Manual for Remote Communities
Edited by Geoff Harris. Darwin, Menzies School of Health Research, c2000.

Evaluation of the Specialist Outreach Service in the Top End of the Northern Territory
By Russell Gruen and Ross Bailie. Darwin, Menzies School of Health Research, c2000.

Health is Life: Report on the Inquiry into Indigenous Health
Report by the Australian Parliament house of representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs, Canberra, May 2000.

The Health of Young Aborigines
A report on the health of Aborigines aged 12 to 25 years, prepared for the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme, by Maggie Brady, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 1991. Hobart: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies, 1992.

Health Report - Indigenous - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Transcripts from Radio National's Health Report, with Norman Swan.

Indigenous Australian Alcohol and Other Drug Databases
From Curtin University of technology, a database of references to both books and articles.

Indigenous Health - Your Health - Health & Wellbeing
Resources from the ABC

Koori Health
From the Department of Human Services, Victoria, Australia, contains the full text of a range of publications on Koori health, as well as statistics on Koori health.

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nutrition Strategy and Action Plan 2000-2010, and First Phase Activities 2000-2003
Developed by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nutrition Working Party. National Public Health Partnership, 2001.

National Indigenous Australian's Sexual Health Strategy
The full text of the National Indigenous Australians’ Sexual Health Strategy 1996-97 to 1998-99 is available at this site.

The NHMRC Road Map: A Strategic Framework for Improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health through Research and Final Report of Community Consultations on the NHMRC Road Map

Nutrition in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples: An Information Paper
Published by NHMRC, July 2000.

Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (OATSIH) Publication and Resources
Full text of reports online as .pdf files.

The Public Health Bush Book
This is the 2nd. edition of the Bush Book, written as a resource for people who work with remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and produced by the Northern Territory Department of Health and Community Services, 2002.

Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
This site contains the full text of both national and regional reports.

Values and Ethics - Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research
National Health and Medical Research Council, 2003.

Other Indigenous Peoples

American Indian Health
An information portal, from the National Library of Medicine, to issues affecting the health and well-being of American Indians.

Arctic Health Publications
The Arctic Health website is a central source for information on diverse aspects of the arctic environment and the health of northern peoples.

Arctic Health Publications Database
The Arctic Health Publications Database contains bibliographic information, abstracts, and links to full-text journal articles, reports, newspapers, conference proceedings, grey literature, and other documents and non-print materials.

Assembly of First Nations - First Nations Health Bulletin

Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database
The Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database contains records describing publications about all aspects of human health in the circumpolar region. The database is a project of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Team in Circumpolar Health Research. It allows searching for material on a large number of specific native peoples.

Factors influencing the health of Canadian Inuit infants
Alison L. Jenkins, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Montreal, March 2002. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.