1. Introduction
Early 2008, representatives from indigenous health organizations, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, and the commonwealth government of Australia, signed an agreement that was meant to ensure that all the relevant stakeholders cooperate to ensure indigenous and non-indigenous Australians have equality in life expectancy and health status by 2030 (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 2008).

For quite a long time, it has been known that indigenous people in Australia have a disadvantage in terms of health. Many organizations and activists have over the years been trying to bridge the gap in health status between them and non-indigenous Australians and the signing of the agreement was a huge milestone that served two purposes. It raised public awareness on the matter and it helped to lay down plan for the achievement of parity in health status (Pholi, Black, & Richards, 2009).

The plan behind achieving health parity was christened “Closing the gap” and it is more of a continuation of a community-based campaign that was initiated about a year before the agreement was signed. Many indigenous community organizations, health services providers, and policy documents are now focused on closing the gap. Policymakers and even news reporters reporting on indigenous health matters are also focusing on the gap in health parity and the issues surrounding it. Perhaps the biggest player or stakeholder in the campaign to close the gap is the Commonwealth government of Australia.

The government is working to improve health outcomes for indigenous people living both in urban and rural areas. Some of the ways in which the government is working to improve the health of indigenous communities include improving the provision of health services and boosting food security especially among indigenous communities living in remote areas. Making sure indigenous people have access to healthy, acceptable, and affordable food is one of the requirements for better health (Department of Prime Miniter and the Cabinet, 2008). This report is an examination of the closing the gap policy and the progress so far.

1. Objective and critique of the closing the gap policy

1. Objectives

The goal of the policy is to create parity in the health status of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

0. Closing the life expectancy gap within a generation

One of the measures commonly used to assess a population’s health is life expectancy. Apart from being a measure of population health, life expectancy is also an indicator of a population’s mortality level. By definition, life expectancy is how long an average individual randomly drawn from a population is likely to live based on present death rates for his or her gender (Biddle & Taylor, 2012). It is usually expressed as how many years one can live from birth.

The life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men born between 2015 to 2017 is 71.6 years compared to 80.2 years for non-indigenous Australians. The gap between the two populations is 8.6 years. Similarly, there is also a large gap in the life expectancy between indigenous females and non-indigenous females. For while indigenous females born between 2015 and 2017 are expected to live for about 75.6 years, non-indigenous females are expected to live up to 83.4 years. The gap is 7.8 years. This is not to say that progress has not been made. For while the gap remains large, the life expectancy of indigenous males and females has increased over the years. Between 2005-2007 and 2015-2017, the life expectancy for indigenous females has increased by 2.7 years while for males has increased by 4.4 years. Nevertheless, the fact is that indigenous men and women do not averagely live longer because of health disparity. Even in correctional facilities, the number of indigenous deaths is usually higher than that of non-indigenous deaths. This has, however, also been linked to the disproportionately huge number of indigenous people in the Australian prison system (Weatherburn, Fitzgerald, & Hua, 2003). With that said, between 2005-2007 and 2015-2017, the gap in life expectancy between indigenous males and non-indigenous Australian males has reduced by 2.9 years, while that between indigenous females and non-indigenous females has also reduced by 1.9 years (AIHW, 2019). These reductions indicate that some progress has been achieved in trying to close the gap.

0. Halving the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children...…prohibitive financial costs including the cost of medication and the cost of consultation.

· Insufficient funding for indigenous health.

· Lack of sensitivity and cultural awareness among mainstream care providers leading to indigenous people feeling left out or unwanted.

· Lack of willingness to self-identify among some indigenous populations.

· Lack of confidence among care providers to ask patients to identify themselves.

7. How might it be improved?

· Improvement in support for indigenous health by the national leadership and the federal government as a whole. This improvement could result in more funding to enable the Indigenous Affairs agency to meet at least its health targets for closing the gap.

· Ensuring the existing targets are followed and that they are not compromised by anything.

· Capacity building in regional areas to ensure that health targets are met in such areas (Wahlquist, 2018).

· More engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at the grassroots level to find out how their health cane be improved.

· Encouraging indigenous people to get into public service in numbers to help make policies that will improve their lives.

8. Conclusion

To evaluate the progress made by the Closing the Gap program especially with regards to the progress made in improving indigenous health, there is a need to use a measure. The measure used here was life expectancy and health status and the data and literature available show that there is a gap that needs to be closed. The size of the gap has been reducing according to some researchers. However, whether the gap is truly closing or not remains to be determined as the available strategies are limited. Some studies have shown that progress towards achieving health parity has significantly slowed down and noted lack of sufficient funding and lack of national leadership on the matter as some of the reasons why. However, there is hope. By increasing funding to improve indigenous health, building the capacity of indigenous health organizations, and encouraging indigenous leaders to participate in decision-making, indigenous health can be significantly improved and the goal of health parity can be achieved by 2030 (Rosenstock, Mukandi, Zwi, & Hill, 2013).…