Ann Larson

It's enough to make you sick: the impact of racism on the health of Aboriginal Australians

Background: Experience of interpersonal racism has been neglected as a mechanism by which inequalities between Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal people are created and maintained.

Prison health and public health responses at a regional prison in Western Australia

Objective: To describe the health of inmates in a Western Australian regional prison and evaluate the coverage of public health interventions.

Does teaching an entire nursing degree rurally have more workforce impact than rural placements

Abstract Education plays a key role in recruitment of health workforce to rural and remote locations. In Australia, Schools of Nursing have set up a variety of educational programmes to encourage rural workforce choices. These programmes include rural campuses and short-term rural placement programmes out of urban campuses. This study compares the relative workforce impacts of rural campus versus short-term rural placements out of urban campus. The single outcome measure – rural or urban location after graduation – showed that the rural school graduated a significantly higher proportion of rural-working graduates (x2 4.46, p = 0.04). However there was no difference in the rural workforce choices of students from rural backgrounds, irrespective of their university location (x2 = 1.45, p = 0.23). We conclude that both rural universities and affirmative action for selecting rural students into nursing programmes are effective workforce strategies, but that rural campuses have the added benefit of encouraging under-represented rural students to access university education.

Reintegrating Coastal Development and Public Health in Western Australia

This article presents three case studies that take a socio-ecological perspective to highlight an interconnectedness between the environment, human participation and organization, and public health, in Western Australian marine, coastal, and near-coastal places. We examine the degree to which coastal zone planning and management interact with public health practitioner, and the consequences of this interaction for biophysical surroundings and human health. The case studies demonstrate the limited roles the public health sector has played, and the indispensable expanded role it might play, in what is traditionally seen as the domain of natural resource management. A socio-ecological analysis highlighted the value of decision-making processes for coastal developments that emphasize dialogue, place, public health issues, resource distribution, as well as ecology. These adaptive capabilities offer scope for understanding the consequences of coastal planning and management actions on both the biophysical condition of the environment and human health, break the cycles of reaction, and provide an alternative framework for regulating the developmental expansion of the Western Australian coastline.

Doing More for Fewer: Health Care for Declining Rural Communities

Thirty per cent of Australians live outside of major cities and 20% of them live in towns which are declining in population. Like residents of other rural communities, they experience poorer health and have less access to health services than those living in cities. In addition, declining rural communities have a higher proportion of vulnerable groups with high health care needs, including Indigenous Australians, farmers and the elderly. As a result of explicit policies and persistent workforce shortages, health services in declining communities are at risk of being closed or down-sized. Such actions can cause a political uproar and have also been shown to have an adverse effect on health, economic sustainability and population growth. As a consequence of these costs, Australia and other countries are adopting other rural health strategies that maintain primary and essential health services in rural communities which are responsive to the needs of the residents and attractive to health care professionals.

Implementation of the Australian core public health functions in rural Western Australia

Objective:To assess the implementation of the Australian core functions of public health in rural Western Australia.