BACKGROUND: Genetic research has potential benefits for improving health, such as identifying molecular characteristics of a disease, understanding disease prevalence and treatment, and developing treatments tailored to patients based on individual genetic characteristics of their disease. Indigenous people are often targeted for genetic research because genes are easier to study in communities...

Summary: Indigenous people across the world experience more health related problems as compared to the population at large. So, this review article is broadly an attempt to highlight the important factors for indigenous peoples’ health problems, and to recommend some suggestions to improve their health status. Standard database for instance, Pubmed, Medline, Google scholar, and Google book sear...

Introduction and aims: Prison entrants commonly have a history of problematic alcohol and other drug (AoD) use. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians are vastly overrepresented in Australian prisons with an incarceration rate 16 times that of non-Indigenous Australians. Relatively little attention has been given to the patterns of AoD use among prison entrants and we hy...

Rates of chronic kidney disease (CKD) among Indigenous groups in Australia exceed non-Indigenous rates eight-fold. Using kidney volume as a surrogate for nephron number, we carried out a study to determine if Indigenous neonates have a smaller kidney volume (and thus a reduced nephron number) from birth compared with non-Indigenous neonates. We recruited term and preterm neonates (<32 weeks) at...

BACKGROUND Systematic evidence on the patterns of health deprivation among indigenous peoples remains scant in developing countries. We investigate the inequalities in mortality and substance use between indigenous and non-indigenous, and within indigenous, groups in India, with an aim to establishing the relative contribution of socioeconomic status in generating health inequalities. METHODS...

BACKGROUND National cancer survival statistics are available for the total Australian population but not Indigenous Australians, although their cancer mortality rates are known to be higher than those of other Australians. We aimed to validate analysis methods and report cancer survival rates for Indigenous Australians as the basis for regular national reporting. METHODS We used national canc...

Human ecology has been broadly defined as the interdis-ciplinary study of the complex and varied systems of interaction between humans and their environment (Editors, Human Ecology 1972). In Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Karim-Aly Kassam provides a meaningful conceptual framework of human ecology integrating biological and cultural diversity with specific reference to th...

Distinguishing 'indigenous' and 'Western' as two types of knowledge is not only potentially ridiculous, but also counterproductive for those who believe that indigenous knowledge has a contribution to make to sustainable development; There is actually nothing new about the rhetoric and practice of indigenous knowledge; The strategy of archiving and disseminating indigenous knowledge runs counte...

Indigenous Australian women have much higher incidence of cervical cancer compared to non-Indigenous women. Despite an organised cervical screening program introduced 25 years ago, a paucity of Indigenous-identified data in Pap Smear Registers remains. Prevalence of cervical abnormalities detected among the screened Indigenous population has not previously been reported. We conducted a retrospe...

OBJECTIVE Most people who die by suicide never seek help, particularly members of ethnic minorities. This study compared the prevalence of contacts with mental health services, types of services accessed and factors related to help-seeking behaviors by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. METHOD All suicides by Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons from Queensland, Australia, during the...