Dear Friends

I thought I would take the opportunity to draw your attention to a significant study published in the Medical Journal of Australia that reports on the health outcomes for a 10 year cohort study drawn from the remote community of Utopia. The findings demonstrate that mortality rates for this community are 40% better than the average outcomes for Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory...

This study has significant implications for policy terms. It shows that not all remote communities are uniformly bad in terms of health outcomes. We suggest that the reasons for the better than expected health outcomes relate to factors in the social organization of this community: its decentralization, the effectiveness of its primary health care services, the quality of diet and physical activity and the degree to which people in this community have historically been able to exert forms of social 'mastery' . In terms of macro social indicators, such as housing or employment, Utopia is similar to other Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. This suggests that investing in housing and local economic development has the potential to further extend the health gain that we have already documented.

This is a multi-centre collaborative study in which the Utopia community
has been a key partner.

Yours truly,

Professor Ian Anderson

Research Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal
Health and Director of the Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit

6 March, 2008

Download Study PDF 

Ant added: ‘Since Utopia has been Indigenous freehold since 1976 and this study shows that the population is in good health, there can be no justification for the government to acquire township land on the basis of health concerns.'

For more comment see:
http://www.aussmc.org.au/Utopia_aboriginal_health.php