Case Study of Cairns at Heron Queensland Australia

Question: Discuss about theCase Study of Cairnsat Heron Queensland Australia. Answer: Introduction The Aboriginal are considered the indigenous people in Australia. There were 670000 Aboriginal people in 2011 and are estimated to grow to 721000 by the year 2012. They form 3% of the total Australian population. Queensland has 4.2% population of the Aboriginal people. This is second to Northern Territory that has 29.8% of the total Aboriginal population. The population of Aboriginal has a growth rate of 2.2% per year (McKennitt, 2012). The Aboriginal people are known of smoking tobacco that has lead to high mortality and morbidity for the community. Smoking of tobacco has been generally accepted in the society that has caused health complications like diabetes, cancer and blood pressure [1, 7, 18]. This project will outline the prevalence and the factors that contribute to the state of smoking among the Aboriginal people in Queensland. This will help health organizations and the government to offer assistance and interventions to reduce adverse effect of smoking in Australia. Significance of the Project According to the Australian government department of Heath, Smoking costs Australia AU$31.5 per year. This includes expenses in health and economic costs. It also records that smoking is responsible for 15000deaths per year in Australia (Korff, 2016). It is estimated that 34.9% of the Aboriginal people smoke by 2015. These levels are high compared to the rest of the Australian population where it 12.9% only. The government has been pursing it goal of reducing smoking among Aboriginal by half from 46% in 2008 to 23% by 2018[2,3,9]. This shows that if the in place mechanisms are continued, the government will not reach it objective. Therefore, this project will seek to get statistics and factors that contribute to high percentage of smoking among Aboriginal people and recommend better interventions mechanisms to improve the situation and attain the government goal by 2018. Statement of the Problem Aboriginal people have suffered adversely as a result of smoking. The rate of smoking of Aboriginal to non Aboriginal in Australia is double (Korff, 2016) [11]. This had led to high health complications among the Aboriginal people that add up to 1500deads each year in Australia and cost the economy AU$ 31.5 billion. The smoking percentage among Aboriginal is expected to decrease to 23% by the year 2018. Smoking of Tobacco is ranked as the cause of the big diseases in the Aboriginal society. 75% of the Aboriginal people have the knowledge of the harm that smoking caused (McKennitt, 2012) [12]. Even with the knowledge, it seemed that it did not influence their smoking habit. Reduction in the percentage of smokers will reduce the health diseases associated with smoking. The research with seek to determine how low income, unemployment and culture inhabiting reduction of smoking among Aboriginal people in Queensland for the past five years. The research will analyze both qualitative data and qualitative data to quantify factors leading to high prevalence levels of smokers among Aboriginals. A sample size of 300 Aboriginal people will be randomly chosen of 14 years and above. Literature Review This section reviews the studies that have been carried in the past that relates to low income, unemployment and culture and abuse of a drug in a society. Low Income When there is Low income in a society, there emerge social problems for both small children and adults which lead to substance abuse. According to a journal published by ICFI in 2013, it showed that children from low income earning families were likely to six times drop out of school. The research concluded that students were likely to engage in other activities and never went back to school. This state, they lack knowledge on how to maintain their health. Khara(2013) argued that parents who earned low income were subject to non-standardized schedules limiting time spend with their children. Parents were not available to offer guidance to their children. This led to children indulging into negative activities in the society. A study by Centre Social Policy showed that children from low income families were forced to work at early age [5]. They were pushed to adulthood at early age and this led them to adopt adult behaviors to fit in the system. These behavior included smoking to be s eem by the society as grown up. Unemployment Unemployment increases the rate of drug abuse. According to Rachael (2014), unemployment heightens the probability of an individual to consume alcohol or smoke that lead to addition [4,8,18]. He concluded that when the job decreased there is an increase in drug intake. She analyzed and found that 18.1% of unemployed people were using drug compared to 9% of the employed counterpart. In another research by Kurtz in 2013, she found that one person in every six unemployed citizen abused drugs in New York. According to NSDUH (National Survey on Drug Use and Health), 17% of the jobless adults were affected by drug intake in USA [10,11]. French (2009) concluded that people who were unemployed were undergoing hard times in their life. He said that unemployed people would lack enough money to buy drugs but had a lot of idle time that led them to using drugs. He also noted that it was not possible to fight drug abuse in a society while the rate of unemployment was high. Culture According to Dwight Health, culture refers to systems that an individual conform to and shapes the persons behavior. Culture is as a result of shared beliefs. It guides individuals in a group on how to act on certain issues. Horvath et al (2016) indicated that embracing a culture made an individual vulnerable to addition if the society is characterized by drugs. They established that a society faced with the same cultural history is likely to suffer devastation leading to continued abuse of drugs. They gave a case study of how Native Americans abuse alcohol due to the suffering they suffered while their land was taken in the process of colonization. OLeary noted in his research that lifestyle appeal, sense of belonging, relief and bonding experience contributed to an individual drug addiction process. He concluded that cultures that view drugs as an avenue for interaction facilitated new members becoming addicts. Jiloha (2009) established that in a culture where both parents abused drugs, their children were twice likely to indulge in drug abuse and non drug abusing parents.. He noted that for mothers smoking, their female children will be smokers. He also concluded that in societies where e children were poorly monitored were likely to abuse drugs [6,19] . This was influenced by family structure. Westermeyer in 2004 recorded in a case study of Native Alkali community where alcohol consumption intervention was successful from 95% to 5% within 10 years by changing the traditions and values of the people [19]. He concluded that revitalization of drug abuse tradition is the only solution to changing and reducing prevalence of drugs in communities faced with drug culture. Project Aim The general aim of the project is to quantify the prevalence and factors contributing to smoking among the people Aboriginal in Cairns-At Heron Queensland Australia for the past five years. This general aim is broken down into specific aims as follows; Determine how low income increase smoking among Aboriginals population Determine how unemployment contribute to smoking among aboriginals people in Cairns-AT Heron Investigate how Aboriginals culture contributes to smoking Recommend to government on appropriate intervention methods to enable attain it Tobacco reduction goal. Research Questions RQ1: Is it that the low income earning among the Aboriginal people of Cairns AT Heron that contribute to high percentages of smoking compared to non Indigenous Australians? RQ2: Is it the high levels of unemployment in Cairn AT Heron that has contributed to high smoking percentages among Aboriginal people? RQ3: Is it the Aboriginal culture in Cairns-AT Heron that facilitates its people to smoking? Research Design This project will be an explanatory research. It will seek to offer explanation of the factors contributing the high levels of smoking among Aboriginal people. The project will analyze the level of income of Aboriginal residing in Cairn-AT Heron Queensland to get the relationship between the income and smoking. This will offer an explanation of how level of income relates to smoking of individuals in a society. The project will also analyze the level of unemployment to understand how levels of unemployment contribute to unemployment. Lastly, the research project will scrutinize the culture and the belief that for patterns of behavior of Aboriginal people to establish if it contributes to the high percentage of smoking among Aboriginal people living in Cairn-At Heron Queensland. Sampling and Recruitment The project is aimed at generalizing the factors contributing to smoking among the whole population of Aboriginal people living in Cairns-At Heron. According to 2011 census, the population of Aboriginal people in Cairn is 14649 (Thomas, 2013)[12,14]. A sample size of 300 people will be randomly picked. This will involve use of a simple random sampling technique to avoid biasness in the sample selected for the project. Data Collection Methods Data to be used in the research project will comprise both primary and secondary data. Primary data will be collected directly from the sample size selected through questionnaires and interviews. Secondary data will be collected from government departments and other agencies with recorded data about the Aboriginal people. Questionnaires will be administered to the sampled individuals representing the total population of Aboriginals people living in Cairns. These individuals will be required to fill a structured questionnaire to provide the required data for the project. Interviews will be conducted by the research assistance on few selected individuals and groups of individuals. Interviews will be recorded on tape and video camera then written down for analysis. Research assistants will be used to collect the data throughout the Cairns Town and arrange it for analysis. Data Analysis and Procedures The data collected will be analyzed through inferential and descriptive methods. Income and unemployment levels will be measured by central tendency, dispersion and range. This analysis will provide the mean, medium and mode of the data that will have been collected. To find the correlation of the factors being tested and the topic under study, an econometric model will be run. The econometric model will show how the dependent variable relates to the independent variables being discussed. It will also show to what extent the variables discussed in this project contribute to the smoking of tobacco among the Aboriginal people in Cairns. S= Where; S is the number of smoking people -The intercept -The level of income - Level of Unemployment U Is the error term From the economic model above, the data collected in the collection process will be run in this model. It is the information from this model that will be used to discuss the result of the project. The relationship will be outlined by this model. Ethical Issues The following will be the ethical issues related to the research project; Informed consent: this will involve the relationship between the research assistance and the individuals participating in the research. The research assistance will ensure that the individuals participating are not force and are ready to provide relevant information. Asking people to provide information based on their ethnicity will lead to a challenge where people feel intimidated by such discriminations. Therefore, voluntary participation will be upheld to ensure that the research is conducted in an ethical manner. Confidentiality of the data collected: The research will be conducted in with great respect of confidential information of the participants. Data about income will be kept confidential throughout the research. Individual or household earnings will not be exposed to a third party. This will avoid participants from hiding some information that they feel it confidential. Privacy: The research will be conducted with a respect for privacy of the individual participating. The identity of the participating individuals will be kept anonymous. Therefore, individuals participating will be able to courageously provide the inquired information by the research assistance. This will enhance quality of the data collected from the research project. Interfering with the privacy is likely to cause conflict among the people after the research has been conducted. Dissemination of the Findings The finding reached in this research projects will be directed to government agencies, health organizations and people of Aboriginal living in Cairns. The message to my Targeted audience will be designed in a simple, clear and concise manner to ensure that it understood and meets the predetermined goal. To the government Agencies ire the department of Health, Tobacco Control Department etc will be written a formal letter addressing the finding and the proposed intervention. Disseminating information to the government Agencies will enable the government use the findings to improve their intervention strategies and attain their goals of reducing smoking among Aboriginal by 23% by 2018. Disseminating findings to health organizations working with the Aboriginal people will enable them treat the root cause of high levels of smoking rather than the symbols. This will make these organizations effective in offering services to the people of Aboriginal origin. And lastly is disseminating the finding to the Aboriginal people. These findings will help the Aboriginal individuals struggling to avoid being addicts by behavioral patterns to avoid. It will also assist parents give guidance to their children on how to lead better life that is tobacco free. Generally, the information will be disseminated to the health organizations websites and advertised on national TVs to create awareness and spread the information from the research project. This strategy will ensure that majority of the people both the Aboriginals and non Indigenous get the finding of the research as soon as it has been published. References French , M.(2009) .8-4-smoking-among-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-isl - Tobacco In Australia. (2016). org.au. Retrieved 27 October 2016, from https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-8-aptsi/8-4-smoking-among-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-isl Akosile, W. (2015). Tobacco plain packaging and smoking rates in Australia. 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