Kevin Rowley (University of Melbourne); Tarun Weeramanthri (Dept Health & Community Services); Christopher Tennant (University of Sydney); Annette Dobson (University of Queensland)
Project Managers:
Alex Brown
Project
Overview / Aims:
The health and social disadvantage of Indigenous Australians has been well recognised. However, the exact ways in which socioeconomic disadvantage leads to poorer health remains unknown. Cardiovascular disease is arguably the greatest contributor to health disparity experienced by Indigenous Australians. This work hopes to explore the ways in which ‘stress’ and depression impact on the risk, cause, progression, outcomes and thus prevention of heart disease among Indigenous men.
The primary aims of the project are to: (a) Develop a valid, reliable and usable measurement tool for determining an individuals ‘psychosocial stress’; (b) Explore the biomedical pathways through which psychosocial stress may impact on CHD in Indigenous men; (c) Explore the contribution of psychosocial stress to the burden of CHD among Indigenous men; and (d) Inform preventative activities for CVD in Indigenous populations.
The Men, Hearts and Minds Study seeks to develop a way of measuring levels of stress and depression in Indigenous men through assessment of the validity and cultural appropriateness of existent tools and garnishing the collective knowledge of community and clinical experts. Secondly it seeks to utilise this tool to identify stress experienced by a sample of Indigenous men resident in Alice Springs and determine their associations with a range of risk factors for CVD. Thirdly, the project will compare the levels and causes of stress experienced by all men suffering an Acute Coronary Syndrome admitted to Alice Springs Hospital to a matched hospital control group.
Potential
Significance:
Understanding the causes and pathways that lead to greater death among disadvantaged populations is critical to the development of health policy and service delivery. This project is aimed at explaining the higher levels of CVD death among Indigenous peoples by assessing the contribution of risk factors, poorer access to care, psychosocial stress and depression. This is critical to understanding disadvantage itself, exploring and lessening the poor health status of Indigenous Australians, and developing systems that improve the health and well being.
Men, Hearts and Minds