The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute’s (SAHMRI) Wardliparingga Aboriginal Health Equity is Australia’s largest dedicated Indigenous health research unit.
Focussed on understanding, monitoring, responding to and reducing inequity in health and wellbeing among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, this month we learn about SAHMRI’s Aboriginal Diabetes study, which Specsavers is supporting.
SAHMRI’s Aboriginal Diabetes Study is a longitudinal study that seeks to better understand diabetes and its complications in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in South Australia.
The study aims to investigate the social, psychosocial, environmental, clinical, and genomic predictors of diabetes and recruited 1390 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people between 2016 and 2020.
The team are now re-engaging with participants to assess how their health has changed overtime, including who has developed diabetes, and who has developed diabetes-related complications, such as diabetic retinopathy, heart disease and kidney damage.
Each participant undergoes a comprehensive eye examination, including refraction, dilated fundus examinations, slit lamp assessment and OCT scans. Specsavers have partnered with the Aboriginal Diabetes Study and provided designer sunglasses to all study participants.
HealthHub will continue to report on findings from this study as they are shared.
