Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People

Disparities between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations continue to be prevalent within Australia. Research suggests that Indigenous people participate in health risk behaviour more often than their non-Indigenous counterparts, and that such behaviour has a substantial impact on...

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Main Authors:	Waterworth, Pippa, Pescud, Melanie, Braham, Rebecca, Dimmock, James, Rosenberg, Michael
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4658065/

id	pubmed-4658065
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-46580652015-12-02 Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People Waterworth, Pippa Pescud, Melanie Braham, Rebecca Dimmock, James Rosenberg, Michael Research Article Disparities between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations continue to be prevalent within Australia. Research suggests that Indigenous people participate in health risk behaviour more often than their non-Indigenous counterparts, and that such behaviour has a substantial impact on health outcomes. Although this would indicate that reducing health risk behaviour may have positive effects on health outcomes, the factors that influence Indigenous health behaviour are still poorly understood. This study aimed to interview people who support Indigenous groups to gain an understanding of their views on the factors influencing health behaviour within Indigenous groups in Western Australia. Twenty nine people participated in the study. The emergent themes were mapped against the social ecological model. The results indicated that: (1) culture, social networks, history, racism, socioeconomic disadvantage, and the psychological distress associated with some of these factors interact to affect health behaviour in a complex manner; (2) the desire to retain cultural identity and distinctiveness may have both positive and negative influence on health risk behaviour; (3) strong social connections to family and kin that is intensified by cultural obligations, appears to affirm and disrupt positive health behaviour; (4) the separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous social connection/networks that appeared to be fostered by marginalisation and racism may influence the effect of social networks on health behaviour; and (5) communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people may be interrupted by distrust between the groups, which reduces the influence of some non-Indigenous sources on the health behaviour of Indigenous people. Public Library of Science 2015-11-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4658065/ /pubmed/26599437 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0142323 Text en © 2015 Waterworth et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Waterworth, Pippa Pescud, Melanie Braham, Rebecca Dimmock, James Rosenberg, Michael
spellingShingle	Waterworth, Pippa Pescud, Melanie Braham, Rebecca Dimmock, James Rosenberg, Michael Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People
author_facet	Waterworth, Pippa Pescud, Melanie Braham, Rebecca Dimmock, James Rosenberg, Michael
author_sort	Waterworth, Pippa
title	Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People
title_short	Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People
title_full	Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People
title_fullStr	Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People
title_full_unstemmed	Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People
title_sort	factors influencing the health behaviour of indigenous australians: perspectives from support people
description	Disparities between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations continue to be prevalent within Australia. Research suggests that Indigenous people participate in health risk behaviour more often than their non-Indigenous counterparts, and that such behaviour has a substantial impact on health outcomes. Although this would indicate that reducing health risk behaviour may have positive effects on health outcomes, the factors that influence Indigenous health behaviour are still poorly understood. This study aimed to interview people who support Indigenous groups to gain an understanding of their views on the factors influencing health behaviour within Indigenous groups in Western Australia. Twenty nine people participated in the study. The emergent themes were mapped against the social ecological model. The results indicated that: (1) culture, social networks, history, racism, socioeconomic disadvantage, and the psychological distress associated with some of these factors interact to affect health behaviour in a complex manner; (2) the desire to retain cultural identity and distinctiveness may have both positive and negative influence on health risk behaviour; (3) strong social connections to family and kin that is intensified by cultural obligations, appears to affirm and disrupt positive health behaviour; (4) the separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous social connection/networks that appeared to be fostered by marginalisation and racism may influence the effect of social networks on health behaviour; and (5) communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people may be interrupted by distrust between the groups, which reduces the influence of some non-Indigenous sources on the health behaviour of Indigenous people.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4658065/
_version_	1613505458987859968

Factors Influencing the Health Behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Perspectives from Support People

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