Page 3302 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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health outcomes. It is important that we pursue health policies which focus on and look at social determinants of health to help people achieve better health outcomes early on in their life and not just after they need acute health services.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.37): I welcome the opportunity to talk on this very important subject—the social determinants of health—this afternoon. I welcome Ms Bresnan’s comments around wanting an informed debate on a subject broader than just hospital performance. I do not necessarily agree that the national health reforms were only about hospitals. They certainly formed a large part of the discussions and the areas of disagreement through the COAG process and through jurisdictions analysing their own positions around national health reform, but, indeed, the less controversial side of national health reform was the establishment of the national partnership agreement on preventive health which was signed back in 2008 as one of the first steps towards national health reform. From memory, I do not think any jurisdiction opposed the establishment of that national partnership.
I think the national health prevention agency is now up and running with its executive staff in place, which is certainly welcome from my point of view, because a larger agency focused just on this area of health will significantly assist small jurisdictions like us to look at the latest evidence and best practice in relation to providing services in this area to local communities.
I agree with Ms Bresnan that the ACT is regarded as a generally affluent community in comparison with the rest of the country, but we know that there still is disadvantage experienced by large numbers of members of this community. We also know, and it is well established, that social and economic disadvantage impacts on health status, with those in lower socioeconomic groups experiencing poorer health status. So there is no doubt that addressing the social determinants of health will contribute to improved health outcomes for the ACT population as a whole, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged people, including people with a disability, children and young people, the aged and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The ACT Council of Social Services compiled a report in 2007, Characteristics of low income ACT households, and this reported from data in 2006. It will be good to have that updated through the latest census data information. There were about 16,000 ACT households in the bottom Australian equivalised income quintile which equated to around 13 per cent of the ACT’s total households.
There are several pockets of ACT households that experience severe disadvantage and are masked when viewed at broad geographic levels, such as statistical subdivision. This is partly due to the ACT’s urban planning and design, which distributes our public housing through most suburbs, and when viewed at the ABS collection district level rather than at the statistical subdivisional level, the ACT has five collection districts that fall within the bottom five per cent in Australian rankings for relative socioeconomic disadvantage under SEIFA.
The majority of these are located in north Canberra and typically feature high levels of public housing and generally accommodate people in receipt of government
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