Indigenous health and environmental risk factors: an Australian problem with global analogues?

Indigenous people experience poorer health than non-Indigenous people, and this well-described inequality has been observed in many countries. The contribution of different risk factors to the health ‘gap’ has understandably focussed on those factors for which there are sufficient data. However, this has precluded environmental risk factors – those present in air, water, food, and soil – due to a lack of data describing exposures and outcomes. These risk factors are demonstrably important at the global scale, as highlighted by the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study. Here, we describe how a greater focus on environmental risk factors is required in order to define their role in the Indigenous health gap. We use the Australian context as a case study of an issue we feel has global analogues and relevance. Suggestions for how and why this situation should be remedied are presented and discussed.