Description
Book SynopsisIndigenous and other marginalized populations worldwide experience significant health inequalities - life expectancies reduced by decades, elevated rates of chronic disease, neonatal mortality, accidental death, infectious disease and suicide. Australia is one of the healthiest countries in the world with one of the most dramatic examples of social inequalities in health.Hard Yakka: Transforming Indigenous Health Policy and Politics examines these inequalities through a critical study of Australian health bureaucracy. The author, medical anthropologist Nili Kaplan-Myrth, discusses and evaluates processes and institutional structures that influence relationships between Indigenous communities and goverment in the development, implementation, and evaluation of health policy. With particular attention to the social and cultural dimensions of governance,Hard Yakka provides a window into the complex challenges of Indigenous representation and self-determination in contemporary, urban Australian society. Finally, Dr. Kaplan-Myrth reflects upon the roles of social scientists and other researchers in public policy and community advocacy. With insights that apply equally well outside of the Australian context,Hard Yakka provides a qualitative model for engaging with problems of health care systems.Hard Yakka is an important text for scholars in the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Indigenous Studies, Ethnicity, Comparative Politics, Public Health, and Medicine.
Trade ReviewIndigenous health is one of the most important domestic policy priorities in Australia and its significance is growing internationally. Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth has undertaken a provocative investigation of the policy processes and institutional structures in this field and her critical insights will be of considerable value to a broad range of people in health policy and Indigenous studies. -- Ian Anderson, Director of the Centre for Health & Society and Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit at the University of Melbourne and Resear
Table of ContentsChapter 1 The Health Policy Jigsaw Chapter 2 Spinning a Good Yarn: Research with Indigenous Communities Chapter 3 The Right to Write: History and Community-Government Relations in Australia Chapter 4 Indigenous Activism, Community-Controlled Health Services, and Changing Health Politics Chapter 5 Dinkum Aussies and Blackfellas: Communities Imagined, Experienced, and Represented Chapter 6 Indigenous Health Policies and Government Policy Processes Chapter 7 Reconciliation and Self Determination
