The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare have reported the five leading causes of death for Australia's First Nations people are coronary heart disease, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer and suicide.
At a time when First Nations people are dying from these preventable illness, an emerging figure in the health industry is that of Wiradjuri Ngemba man Jye Murray also known as the Koori Physio.
His ambition is to tackle these preventable health issues head on.
Mr Murray's family come from Brewarrina area in New South Wales, which he said is a part of the Ngemba nation as well as Cowra on Wiradjuri land.
"I was born and raised in Cowra amongst a large Aboriginal community to which my family made up a significant part of," Mr Murray said.
"I've been really lucky to be brought up in a community and family with strong cultural ties. Since I was a kid I've known about LORE, our people's history including creation and dreaming stories, I've been taught about my country by male members of my family, my family continue to speak a large amount of traditional language. My father speaks Wiradjuri well and teaches it in primary schools.
"I had a lucky upbringing immersed in culture, kinship and community and I've seen first-hand the power culture and cultural factors have on well-being, health and quality of life."
Like many Koori kids, Mr Murray grew up with dreams of playing rugby league and thought that this would be his pathway to success.
"Everyone in my family loves Rugby League, it's like a religion to us almost," he said.
Mr Murray said all throughout high school he had tunnel vision and as football was his "Plan A" and he hadn't even considered needing a backup plan.
After pursuing NRL opportunities as a late teenager he said he found the transition to being away from family and Country challenging.
This led to reconsidering his pathway, determining university studies would be his next challenge/
"I have always been a driven kid inspired by extremely hard workers on both sides of my family so my new 'Plan A' was getting a university degree," Mr Murray said.
"Get a degree in something that I can eventually use as a platform to help my people and give back to a culture that raised me and gave me everything.
"With sport comes inevitable injuries, so I spent a lot of time with physios and I loved it. I loved learning about my body, loved how they would take assessment outcomes and use them to construct a rehab program that required me to work hard but also get better,
I was fascinated with this so that was the new dream, get to uni become a physio and go from there.
Mr Murray, who is aptly referred to as the Koori Physio on social media, graduated from Newcastle university four years ago and has been a practicing physiotherapist for five years.
Looking back on his career thus far and the challenges he faced during his higher education, he describes the feeling as wild.
"I still feel like the same kid when I started this journey. When I reflect on my uni experience it was a very challenging one," he said.
"It was a really difficult time in my life. Coming from a small country town with a large Aboriginal community that consisted largely of my family, my identity was pretty solid."
Mr Murray encountered some confronting scenarios throughout his time pursuing higher education, including being exposed to racist stereotyping.
"I also grew up knowing exactly who I was as a black kid and that was never challenged. Uni was the first time in my life I experienced racism, identity questioning and stereotyping on a weekly, very nearly day to day basis," he said.
"It shattered me, it was really difficult to work through so far away from my home. I sort of lost myself as a person, especially as a Koori for a while there.
"It's funny you know people at uni are supposed to be intelligent, tertiary educated people. Society pictures racists and what they may look like and most of the time it's not well-spoken white kids with a handful of textbooks."
Reflecting on how he survived those challenges, Mr Murray told National Indigenous Times he got his degree and "got out of there as fast as he could".
"... And I've sort of hit the ground running in my career. I've landed myself in this great area of physio where I work mostly with sport and exercise related injuries as well as the everyday aches and pains," Mr Murray said.
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"I mostly rehab this through strength and conditioning training amongst other things and it's fun, I love it. I love the challenge, I love being technical and thorough and I love that I'll never know everything, not even close so I'm always learning."
Mr Murray has stood true to his intended pathway and he is now using his knowledge and his platform to help educate Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons alike with culture and all things related to health.
"Being involved in Aboriginal issues is in my blood and I've always been passionate about Aboriginal Health," he said.
"I have a memory from high school of a teacher telling me and another Aboriginal kid in the class who is still a great mate of mine, that we were likely to die ten years younger than the rest of the class and I think subconsciously that became my purpose. I wanted to change that.
Mr Murray said he started his social media pages with one mission - to inspire mob to live healthier lives so that Indigenous peoples may live longer and thrive in our communities.
"I've learnt a lot along the way through reading, research, talking to my family, talking to community leaders and Elders. I'm really passionate about the cultural drivers for health," he said.
"Incorporating connection to country, self-determination, language, recognition, cultural continuity and expression, family, kinship and community into western health interventions to achieve better health outcomes and quality of life for mob.
He said at the heart of achieving this is relationships, trust and sharing which is what LORE is built upon.
"So I'm also passionate about helping non-Indigenous health care workers achieve this as well," Mr Murray said.
"My focus with this is on the 5 major causes of death and illness for our mob which are heart disease, diabetes (kidney disease as a complication), cancer, lung disease and social and emotional well-being and suicide.
"My war is on these things. They all share similar behavioural risk factors such as grog, smoking, drugs, poor living conditions, poor diet, physical inactivity and obesity."
"Our mob participates in these at higher rates because of history, intergenerational trauma, significant disparities in social determinants of health and racism. I want to attack these risk factors with education, nutrition, exercise, sleep and mental health care but in a way that uses our cultural drivers for health and well-being."
Mr Murray said his approach "must be based on our values as black fullas and it must be done on our own terms".
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"It's not easy and that's why we aren't making any progress because the health care system continues to approach it based on a white washed system with white values and principles," he said.
"Aboriginal people are being heard, we are having a larger say in matters that concern us including health care. There is also a lot of evidence emerging around this stuff. If the healthcare system continues to approach the above issues with the same outlook it's lazy and ignorant to our needs.
"Everyone needs advice tailored to their specific needs. Prior to invasion we were roughly 600 land owning nations. We are a diverse group of people. So one thing won't help everyone or even be relevant to everyone."
In saying that if I had to give generic advice on how to overall live healthier it would be this:
Mr Murray said if he had to give generic advice on how to live a healthier life overall, it would include:
- Aim to get active - 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise with some resistance training per week is crucial. Pick something you enjoy doing. This is more important than the type of exercise you are doing because you're more likely to stick to it.
- Exercise on Country in a place of ancestral significance, connect to our land. Do this with a member of your family and talk. Talk about your family, talk about our history, talk about current Aboriginal affairs.
- When it comes to nutrition and eating healthier, supplement regular diets with traditional diets and bush medicines. This is utilising one of the most powerful cultural drivers, connection to country.
- Join community groups or sports teams with other black fullas.
- Attend community run events that provide education on healthier lifestyles.
- Prioritise your sleep.
Mr Murray said it is important to look after mental health, through connecting to culture and mob.
"If we continue to manage our health concerns in a white way we will continue to go nowhere," he said.
"There is still a nine and eight year life expectancy for boys and girls respectively. We need to start trying things our way."
Mr Murray's advice to the broader community from his physiotherapist perspective for staying pain and injury free is strength training.
To achieve this goal he said "two or preferably more sessions in the gym where you are lifting weights that fatigue you at six to eight reps will do absolute wonders for your body and injury prevention".
"If you're looking to get in or stay in shape then a fool proof recipe is focus on your food, sleep a lot and pick exercise you enjoy doing because you're more likely to do it," he said.
"When it comes to what motivates me, I have internal and external motivators. Internally I have this voice that always needs me to be better, work harder and achieve more. Which has brought me a lot of great results but also great downfalls. Externally my family, my people, my culture are incredible sources of motivation for me.
"I feel I have found a purpose in my life, to help Aboriginal people get healthier and that's all I need to stay on track."
