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Background
A national chronic disease strategy has been described focusing on health promotion and lifestyle change, screening and evidence based disease management. The Lifescripts resources complement this strategy by focusing on health promotion and lifestyle change.
Objective
To provide an overview of the role of the recently developed indigenous Lifescripts resources as a tool for health checks and chronic disease prevention and management.
Discussion
Effective indigenous health promotion requires appropriate tools for behavioural modification and community engagement. This involves a greater emphasis on the social determinants of health to reduce the barriers to healthy behaviours. The indigenous Lifescripts provide a flexible tool for health care providers in the indigenous health sector to deliver lifestyle related brief interventions that accommodate local community resources and support structures. However, to maximise their potential, a systematic approach to incorporating these tools into practice must be adopted.
Lifestyle factors such as poor nutrition, physical inactivity, tobacco smoking and alcohol misuse remain the four underlying risk factors associated with the growing burden of chronic disease.1 In Australia, chronic disease is particularly common among Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders.2 For example. Indigenous Australians suffer from a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes which is frequently characterised by earlier onset and higher complication rates3 than that experienced by other Australians. In addition, Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders have a significantly shorter life expectancy than most other Australians, largely due to complications of chronic disease.4
The National Chronic Disease Strategy5 is aimed at engaging all Australian health professionals in the prevention and management of chronic disease by providing a framework for a multidisciplinary approach based on primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Consistent with this strategy, the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing supported the development of two evidence based brief intervention tools: the smoking, nutrition, alcohol and physical activity ('SNAP') framework,6 and more recently the Lifescripts7 resources. The adoption of a brief intervention approach is consistent with current Australian guidelines for disease prevention in primary care.8
The Lifescripts initiative
The Lifescripts initiative was launched in 2005 to provide general practice with the resources and skills to advise patients on how to reduce lifestyle risk factors for chronic disease. The Lifescripts brief intervention tool is based on individual assessment using the...