Essential Service Standards for Equitable National Cardiovascular Care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

Cardiac care for Indigenous Australians: practical considerations from a clinical perspective

“…This includes understanding of cardiovascular disease presentations, realistic management approaches that are appropriate to the individual patient and support mechanisms applicable to Indigenous communities. Indigenous Australians deserve the same level of evidence‐based cardiovascular health care and access to care as non‐Indigenous Australians 36 …”

Response to Letter to the Editor: Essential Service Standards for Equitable National Cardiovascular Care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

“…We thank Davis et al [1] for acknowledging the potential role that the ESSENCE Standards could have in reducing disparities in cardiovascular care and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people [2].…”

“…Secondly, ESSENCE, was established as an exemplar approach to closing the life expectancy gap using cardiovascular disease as our focus, largely because of the strong evidence base to guide clinical management and its potential impact on life expectancy differentials [2,5].…”

Extracting the ESSENCE - Cardiovascular Health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians

“…The two papers in this edition of Heart Lung and Circulation describing the ESSENCE project Standards and the strategy for their development [1,2] are of the highest importance. They provide for the first time a broad ranging yet detailed description of the minimum standards of cardiovascular care that should be provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to ensure equity for all Australians.…”

“…Chronic Heart Failure also provides a key example of disparities between populations, particularly in remote communities [5,7]. Similarly, the prevalence of cerebrovascular disease in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is twice that of non-Indigenous Australians and is associated with higher mortality rates [5] -of all the more importance given the problems associated with timely access to care, documented in the ESSENCE Project [1]. Rheumatic Heart Disease -a priority in the ESSENCE project yet virtually eradicated in the non-Indigenous Australian populationhighlights the immense disparities between populations, and the need for a nationally coordinated approach that covers primordial prevention, early detection and long term treatment and prophylaxis [8].…”