Aboriginal ageing
HEALTH INFORMATION
WHAT WE KNOW
“Healthy ageing is your mind staying young” many Australians would agree with this statement by an older Aboriginal person. With increasing lifespan, healthy ageing is becoming synonymous with healthy brain ageing and dementia prevention is being recognised as a national and global priority.
It is known that events that occur throughout our lives may have an effect on how well we age. Examples of early life factors that could affect physical health and brain function later in life are issues that arise during pregnancy and birth, early life events and illnesses, education and parenting. Mid-life factors include high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, obesity, heart and lung disease, alcohol and drug use and education, job experience and training. Later life factors include cognitive changes due to age, dementia, the impact of the life expectancy gap and access to aged care services.
What we have discovered
There are growing numbers of older Aboriginal Australians, but recent research at NeuRA has found that dementia prevalence is three times higher in Aboriginal peoples compared to estimates for the general Australian population. This disparity in dementia rates is a consistent finding across remote, regional and urban communities.
Aboriginal Elders play vital roles in their communities and further research is required to understand the causes of these higher rates of dementia, reduce the burden of dementia and improve health and longevity for Aboriginal Australians, as they grow older.
About our research
The Broe and Radford Group focus on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal Australians and how best to support their cognitive health in older age. An important part of this work involves finding the best ways to ensure people gain access to the health services they need. The aim of our research is to look at healthy ageing in its wider social context and investigate what services can support improvements in Aboriginal health, especially in older people.
By liaising with Aboriginal communities and representatives, we have identified that there is enormous interest amongst Aboriginal people in understanding the scope of age-related diseases like dementia in their communities.
Through the Koori Growing Old Well Study, since 2008 we have been gathering information from over 300 Aboriginal people aged 60 years and above living in cities, smaller towns and country areas in New South Wales.
Please see below for Our Latest Research
Read about Valerie’s experience of participating in the Koori Growing Old Well study.
OUR LATEST RESEARCH
Koori Active and Healthy Ageing Project
“Healthy ageing is your mind staying young” – Koori Growing Old Well Study participant
Healthy Ageing calls for cognitively, physically and socially active lifestyles. The current project seeks to recognise existing community strengths but work to enhance participation and engagement, provide new resources specific to healthy ageing and develop an accessible platform for rolling out this intervention to diverse older people and communities, enabling widespread benefit. We will trial a cutting-edge approach to advance healthy ageing with implications for many Australians to benefit, particularly older Aboriginal people.
The project examines how to implement evidence based healthy ageing programs in urban and regional Aboriginal communities. Elders play a vital role in Indigenous communities, providing leadership, caring for family, and transmitting cultural knowledge and practices. However, the health, well-being and quality of life of the increasing numbers of older Indigenous people, are threatened by high rates of dementia, falls and depression. Novel culturally-safe approaches are needed to better engage and support Indigenous peoples in terms of healthy ageing. This research will develop and evaluate effective, culturally appropriate, and accessible strategies to promote healthy ageing in Aboriginal communities. It will also investigate whether and how resilience related to social and cultural cohesion can protect well-being in Indigenous communities.
