Changing mortality patterns in Kimberley Aborigines.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To examine the causes of officially reported deaths from several categories among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in a statistical division of north-west Australia from 2002 to 2011. METHODS: A cross-sectional analysis of official Death Registration data to calculate mortality rate ratios (Aboriginal against non-Aboriginal) for that decade in six major International Classification of Disease (ICD)-10 categories. The study setting was the West Kimberley Health District in the far north of Western Australia. RESULTS: Death rates of Aborigines relative to non-Aborigines were much higher, by more than 10 times in some categories. Most of the excess deaths in these categories were due to circulatory diseases, injury and poisonings, neoplasms, diabetes, respiratory, and genitourinary conditions. CONCLUSION: This study has documented the heavy burden of mortality in West Kimberley Aborigines compared with the pattern found in non-Aboriginal people living in the same region.

Health behaviours and outcomes associated with fly-in fly-out and shift workers in Western Australia.

AIMS: To examine the association of health behaviours and outcomes with employment type in the West Australian adult population. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of employed adults aged 16 years and over using self-reported information collected in the WA Health and Wellbeing Surveillance System between 2008 and 2010. A total of 380 fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workers, 913 shift workers and 10 613 workers of other employment types were identified. RESULTS: FIFO workers exhibited similar health behaviours to shift workers but had a different sociodemographic profile. Compared with other employment types, FIFO workers were significantly more likely to be current smokers, drink alcohol at risky levels, and be overweight or obese, after adjusting for age, sex and survey sampling strategies. They were less likely to report current mental health problems. CONCLUSIONS: Self-reported health behaviours of FIFO workers differ from other employment types. FIFO workers are expected to increase in number over the next decade, as the mining and resources sector expands in Australia. Our findings suggest that health interventions, whether in the workplace or clinical settings, need to be informed by the demographic mix of the cohort of workers on entry as they are not a homogenous group, and targeted towards specific employment patterns (length of shifts and type of employment) to improve their current and future well-being.

The relationship between license type and alcohol-related problems attributed to licensed premises in Perth, Western Australia.

Drink-driving offenses, alcohol-related traffic accidents and number of assault charges were used as indicators of the degree of alcohol-related problems associated with individual licensed premises in the Perth Traffic Police region of Western Australia. These indicators were used to rank five main categories of licensed premises according to the levels of harm experienced by their customers while controlling for the amounts of alcohol sold in each category. Nightclubs, taverns and hotels emerged as "high-risk" in comparison with clubs and restaurants. The role of such factors as different customer characteristics, opening hours, types of entertainment, restrictions on clientele and provision of meals are discussed as possible explanations underlying this finding.

The measurement of harmful outcomes following drinking on licensed premises.

The relationships between five potential indicators of alcohol-related harm following drinking on licensed premises in Perth were explored. These were annual purchases made by individual licensees of 'high' (>=3.8%) and 'low' (<3.8%) alcohol content drinks, the number of times a particular licensed establishment is cited by drivers as the last place of drinking prior to failing a roadside breath-test (including after accidents) and the annual number of assaults occurring either on or in the vicinity of particular licensed premises. The study area selected was a central part of the Perth metropolitan area with 367 licensed premises serving a residential population of 400 000. Highly significant correlations were found between each of the five variables. The correlations involving purchases of low alcohol drinks, however, were small. When purchases of alcohol were controlled, significant, though lower, correlations, were still evident between the other three variables. This suggests that there are risk factors other than extent of alcohol sales which further research will need to identify, and that these indicators of harm can be of value in monitoring the impact of future intervention strategies.