Abstract: • This state-wide Aboriginal community child health survey, the first of its kind in Australia, describes physical and mental health and their antecedents in Western Australian Aboriginal children and young people. • Aboriginal young people had significantly more physical and mental health problems and were more likely to engage in lifestyle risk factors than non-Aboriginal young people. • Aboriginal young people tend to be caught up in a cycle of disadvantage that includes family and community factors as well as recent history, facilitating their making less optimal life choices, thereby perpetuating the cycle. • A coordinated approach will be required to break this cycle, in which appropriately and sympathetically provided medical MJA 2005; 183: 433–435 attention is necessary but not sufficient.
Notes: on behalf of the WAACHS Steering Committee,