AN injection of $750,000 from State and Federal Governments will be used to expand an innovative diabetes and kidney disease health awareness project across Goldfields region Aboriginal communities.
Using a variety of art forms to convey dietry and healthcare information, the expanded Western Desert Kidney Health Project will try to remedy Kalgoorlie's reputation as one of WA’s unhealthiest towns and to lower disease rates – amongst Australia's highest - in the region's communities.
A collaboration between the University of Western Australia’s Kalgoorlie-based Rural Clinical School and the Wongutha Birni Aboriginal Corporation, the project last week attracted funding from the federal Council for the Arts and the state Department of Culture and the Arts to continue in an expanded form.
The project’s chief investigator, Dr Christine Jeffries-Stokes, said Aboriginal health workers would collaborate with national and international artists to develop health promotion and health education strategies.
“The health workers are also going to be trained as artists. The artists will work with the communities to develop the healthcare messages. They will engage community members through performance, music, dance, painting, singing, drumming and festivals,” Dr Jeffries-Stokes said.
The Western Desert Kidney Health Project is also a finalist in the WA Healthway Public Health Awards.
Dr Jeffries-Stokes said the project was piloted last year in the Leonora, Laverton and Mount Margaret area and proved extremely successful.
She said community members were “screened” at the start of the project and then after six and 12 months for signs of kidney disease.
“There was quite a dramatic improvement. There were also indications that people had (as a result of the art and information program) changed their diet and improved their health,” Dr Jeffries-Stokes said.
Diabetes, particularly in communities where alcohol is banned, was the major cause of kidney disease in Aboriginals, she said.
“In some instances, in as little as two generations, they (Aboriginal communities) have gone from a traditional protein-based diet to a charbohydrate-based diet and there is evidence that this does not suit them.
“There are signs of diabetes in children as young as four – my youngest (diabetes) patient is nine.”
The Rural Clinical School, which also hosts medical students from The University of Notre Dame Australia, hopes to attract more funding for the $7 million project, partly to buy trucks to be used as mobile clinics.