social and cultural factors such as racism, discrimination, cultural disconnection and lack of employment and educational opportunities. Colonisation has had an ongoing impact. Overcrowding and poor housing contributes to poor health and family dysfunction and violence. High rates of incarceration of adults and youth contribute to early death and poor mental health. Hospitalisation rate Indigenous Australians go to hospital at a higher rate than non-Indigenous Australians. In 2010–11, Indigenous Australians used hospitals 2.5 times more frequently than non-Indigenous people. This rate comes from an age-standardised separation rate (hospital check-out) of 911 per 1,000 for Indigenous people. The 2010–11 age-standardised separation rate for Indigenous people living in the NT was 1,704 per 1,000, 7.9 times the rate for non-Indigenous people. About 80% of the difference between these rates was due to higher separations for Indigenous people admitted for dialysis. The 2020 AIHW reported that Indigenous children are more likely to get hospitalized and experience tooth decay. Lack of access to the right diet, dental services, and other social disadvantages are reported as contributing factors to such poor health. Life expectancy From 1996 to 2001, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) used indirect methods for its calculations, because census results were deemed to be unreliable, and figures published in 2005 (59.4 years for males and 64.8 years for females) indicated a widely quoted gap of 17 years between indigenous and non-indigenous life expectancy, though the ABS does not now consider the 2005 figures to be reliable. The Social Justice Report: 2005 by the Australian Human Rights Commission reported a seventeen-year gap between the life expectancy of Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians. This prompted health and human rights activists to establish the "Close the Gap" campaign, which focused on health equality for Indigenous Australians, including increasing life expectancy, and associated factors such as housing. In 2009, after previous methods of comparing life expectancy rates proved unreliable, a new method was developed by the ABS, based on tracing the deaths of people identified as Indigenous at the 2006 census. In 2009 the ABS estimated life expectancy at 67.2 years for Indigenous men (11.5 years fewer than for non-Indigenous) and 72.9 years for Indigenous women (9.7 years fewer than for non-Indigenous). Estimated life expectancy of Indigenous men ranged from 61.5 years for those living in the Northern Territory to a high of 69.9 years for those living in New South Wales, and for Indigenous women,