The statistics are clear: five years after the launch of the Close the Gap campaign, improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health remains one of our nation’s greatest challenges.
While there are some improvements, with the Prime Minister reporting to the nation recently that we are making significant progress in reducing the much higher rate of Indigenous deaths in children under the age of one, we have still made however little progress in closing the 10-17 year life expectancy gap as a whole.
National Close the Gap Day – Thursday 24 March – is a way you can deepen understanding of the issue in your community and keep the issue upper-most in the minds of our political leaders.
By hosting an event on or around this day, you and your friends or work colleagues can join with tens of thousands of other Australians to send a powerful message to all our political leaders about the need to maintain the focus on closing the gap.
Events take place in homes, workplaces, schools, universities, medical centres or wherever you think people may be interested in finding out more about the Close the Gap campaign. Some events are attended by hundreds of people, others by just a handful of friends or family.
What you can do:
- Register to run your own event
- Find an event near you
- Join the Facebook event and tell your friends
- Find out more about the Close the Gap campaign
