Aboriginal Birth Cohort study reaches 32 years of looking at health in the NT community – ABC News

Updated March 10, 2020 12:22:50

Since 32-year-old Aidan Hill was born, his medical history has been meticulously documented as part of the Menzies School of Health Research's Aboriginal Birth Cohort Study.

It is the longest and largest study of Aboriginal people in Australia, with 686 participants all born between 1987 and 1990 at Royal Darwin Hospital.

Every five years, Mr Hill and hundreds of other Indigenous Territorians from 40 different communities across the Top End meet with researchers who ask about their emotional wellbeing and alcohol intake, record their body measurements and test their heart health.

All up, the testing runs for about two hours, as researchers comprehensively record details they hope will help them understand more about the causes of chronic conditions such as diabetes and kidney disease and improve the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians.

Early results show Indigenous Territorians living in urban areas are generally healthier than those living in remote areas and there are "significant differences" in the socioeconomic status of Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants.

While this in itself is not new news, researchers are continuing to assess the effect of early-life factors, birth and childhood, on later physical and mental health, and to examine which factors influence these across the course of life.

Mr Hill was born four weeks premature on July 1, 1987.

Shortly after his birth, Mr Hill's mother was asked if she would be happy to sign her newborn up to the long-term study.

More than three decades later, Mr Hill now married with three kids of his own is still taking part, keen to be part of a study that may improve health outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

"The whole idea is about looking after my health, and the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians so I try to take part whenever I can," he said.

Mr Hill's wife Lennair was also a premature baby born 10 weeks before her due date.

"I've got a heart condition and [I got] a pacemaker at nine," Ms Hill said.

In 2006, researchers asked her to participate in the Top End Cohort, a parallel study of non-Indigenous people also born in Darwin between 1987 and 1991.

"They started doing me because I'm also premature," Ms Hill said.

"Each time we go back, we get to look at our previous record.

"It's good to see how we were tracking from when we were teenagers to now in our 30s.

"We challenge each other, turn it into a competition who is the healthiest?"

Researchers aim to compare the health and wellbeing of young people in both studies and identify people who are most at risk of developing chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart and kidney disease and mental health problems.

For Ms Hill, taking part in the study also ensures she is providing a good example for daughters Taleiah, 13, Lakhyah, 11 and Natayah, 6.

Gurmeet Singh, a senior research fellow at Menzies School of Health Research and Flinders University, is the chief investigator of the Aboriginal Birth Cohort Study and has dedicated 20 years of her professional life to the project.

She's also the director of Menzies's Life Course Studies program.

"The most striking finding is, besides this being a very high-risk population in terms of chronic diseases and premature death, so far we've found that most of our participants are healthy," Professor Singh said.

"Up to 25, we actually didn't find high rates of chronic-disease markers, which we were kind of expecting."

The project was founded by paediatrician Susan Sayers, who wanted to examine how babies born small for their gestational age fared compared to babies born a normal weight.

But a 1989 study from the UK researcher David Barker changed the scope of the Menzies study because it showed the long-term health effects of a low birth weight, with higher rates of coronary heart disease in people aged 60-70 who were born small.

"We decided they needed to follow them up further than early childhood," Professor Singh said.

Now, 32 years later, researchers have discovered significant differences in socioeconomic status between Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants, with the majority of Indigenous participants either married or in a de facto relationship with one or more children.

With each follow-up, researchers travel to about 40 communities across the Top End and meet more than 500 participants.

They have found the majority of urban non-Indigenous participants had 12 years of schooling, but only about 2030 per cent of urban and remote Indigenous participants had completed 12 years of schooling.

Almost all urban non-Indigenous males reported employment as the main source of household income, compared with under half of urban and remote Indigenous males.

Results published earlier this year also showed one in three young adults were "at risk" of psychological distress and one in five were "at risk" of suicidal ideation or self-harm.

"Young adulthood is a critical time when behaviours are formed that shape lifelong health," the researchers wrote.

"The alarmingly high prevalence of adverse cardio-metabolic profiles found among young Indigenous males and females in this study indicates an urgent need for programs aimed at risk mitigation, targeting the priority areas of unhealthy weight and resultant inflammation."

Professor Singh said researchers also wanted to learn more about how emotional distress and health outcomes were linked to which degree poorer health outcomes influenced a participant's mental health and mental health concerns affected participant's healthy choices.

Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, aboriginal, diet-and-nutrition, health, darwin-0800, nt, alice-springs-0870, australia

First posted March 09, 2020 04:39:14

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Aboriginal Birth Cohort study reaches 32 years of looking at health in the NT community - ABC News