The Council of Australian Governments (COAG), implementing a $1.6 billion National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap, pledged to develop and implement coordinated strategies to address the key causes and determinants of Indigenous disadvantage [ 6].
This report does not describe Indigenous health inequity and social determinants of health in the deserved detail, as a combination of social, economic, environmental and cumulative traumatic historical experiences underpin the inequity (Whelan and Wright 2013).
As international strategies focus on treatment access, greater effort is needed to address the broader determinants of risk among Indigenous peoples as well as developing approaches that focus on empowerment to ensure inclusion of Indigenous peoples.
The past several decades have seen major efforts made to close gaps in health and social determinants of health for Indigenous persons.
Commitments to improving funding structures and attitudes toward research must change to improve mentoring outcomes across a range of social determinants of health for Indigenous Australians.
In particular, colonization is an important determinant of health for Indigenous peoples worldwide [ 2], including in Canada.
Throughout the world, there is increasingly recognition that racism is an important determinant of health for indigenous populations and other minority groups [ 1, 2].
7. Brown A, D., Morrissey M, J., Sherwood J, M. Uncovering the Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease among Indigenous People.
Despite the limitations, this study is one of the first in Australia to provide in-depth data on the qualitative determinants of smoking among contemporary Indigenous young people.
However, despite a wealth of literature in other populations, there is less evidence on the determinants of smoking initiation among Indigenous youth.
