Reports

Alcohol and other drug use can be a risk factor for harms that impact other people and the community (‘community harms’), including driving under the influence and violence. This article focuses on community harms related to alcohol and other drug use, such as criminal activity, physical and verbal abuse, and risky activities such as driving under the influence.

Injury is a major cause of hospitalisation and death in Australia. This report presents annual updates of injury related emergency department (ED) presentations, hospitalisations and deaths, including trends over the preceding decade.

This article presents annual updates of assault related injury hospitalisations and homicide deaths, including trends over the preceding decade. Assaults and homicides are intentional causes of injury and death. More information on assaults and homicides in the context of family, domestic and sexual violence is available on the AIHW’s Family, domestic and sexual violence site.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) Specialist Homelessness Services Collection (SHSC) includes information about clients receiving homelessness services support from 1 July 2011 onwards. These data provide important insights into the homelessness support service system, and can be linked to other national health and welfare data to examine service use, health outcomes and demographics for specific cohorts. Additional research will be added regularly to this report.

Many factors influence safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) people. For First Nations people, communities, family and kin are an integral part of life and strengthen overall social and emotional wellbeing. Family support can strengthen wellbeing by providing connections to community and culture and the provision of emotional support, particularly in times of stress.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), with funding from the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS), is developing a prototype (pilot) data collection on government-funded specialist crisis family and domestic violence (FDV) services provided to victim-survivors.

Overall, the project provides an opportunity for governments to agree which data would be most meaningful to include in a future national data collection to meet stakeholder information requirements, and the best process to achieve this. 

This summary report provides a recommended way forward for the pilot data collection, drawing on in-depth consultation completed by AIHW to June 2025.

Injuries among women (females aged 19 years and over) contributed to 40% of all Australian injury hospitalisations in 2022–23. This report describes emergency department (ED) presentations, hospitalisations and deaths due to injuries among women in 2022–23, and trends over the last decade. It describes the main causes of injury impacting women, the nature and severity of injuries sustained, variations between specific population groups, and circumstances surrounding the injury.

The AIHW Specialist Homelessness Services Collection includes information about clients receiving homelessness services support from 1 July 2011 onwards. These data have been analysed to examine service usage patterns and demographics for specific cohorts. Additional insights will be added regularly to this report.

This report uses linked data to examine the demographic characteristics and health service interactions for young people with at least one FDV-related hospital stay. It shows 5,024 young people had at least one FDV-related hospital stay when aged under 18 from 2010–11 to 2020–21. Half (54%) were female, one-third (33%) were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, and over one-third (37%) had their first FDV-related stay before age 5.

This article provides initial exploratory analysis of available linked data. It shows that 2 in 5 specialist homelessness services (SHS) clients who experienced family and domestic violence (FDV) had received Parenting Payment Single during 2011–2021, more than double that for other (non-FDV) clients. As the majority of SHS clients who experienced FDV were female, this suggests the clients receiving the Parenting Payment Single were more commonly single mothers with young children.