Deadly Choices
A Healthy Choice
Assist chronic care clients with
- In Aboriginal slang, if something is 'deadly', it is great.
- A Deadly Choice is a good choice, and we encourage the community to make these choices every day.
- Deadly Choices also encourages our people to access their Local Community Controlled Health Service and complete an annual 'Health Check'.
- We aim to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to make healthy choices for themselves and their families; stop smoking, eat good food and exercise daily.
The Health Check is a comprehensive preventative health screen for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have much higher rates of chronic diseases and their risk factors, and much higher rates of preventable hospital admissions due to these chronic diseases than non-Indigenous Australians. The result is a gap in life expectancy, which is 10.6 and 9.5 years, respectively less for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males and females than non-Indigenous males and females.
Many health problems don’t cause pain or make you feel sick until they have been affecting your body for a long time. When we do a full health assessment, we look for early signs of health problems so we can stop them from becoming more significant problems down the track. Preventing and managing diseases early leaves a much better chance of staying active, feeling good and living longer with our families.
All Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are eligible for a health check “every 9 months.” In practice, we usually go with simplicity and encourage people to have a health check every year.
An Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander Health Worker, Doctor and occasionally a Nurse will usually be involved in different parts of the health check, working together as a team.
Our health staff will ask you some questions about your health and the things that affect your health. They do some checks in the clinic, e.g. checking your blood pressure, weight, height, eyes, ears, heart and lungs. They will usually offer to do some tests, including blood tests to check for, e.g. diabetes, kidney disease, check the level of different fats in the blood, and so on.
A full health assessment does take time, usually around 45 minutes to an hour in total, sometimes a little longer.
The Doctor will give you feedback and work out with you what your health goals might be, as well as arranging follow up appointments if needed.
Our Health Worker is available to go through your health check results in detail and to work on some strategies to tackle any issues that may have come up. Help can be provided during this visit or at another arranged time.
Last but not least, you get a Deadly Choices jersey for making the Deadly Choice to get a full health check done!
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