Data gaps, limitations and opportunities
It is important to note the health and housing situation of any population is measured by many factors beyond those analysed in this report.
Although hospital separations data are a valuable source of information about admitted patient care, they have limitations as indicators of ill health. Sick people who are not admitted to hospital are not counted and those who have more than 1 separation in a reference year are counted on each occasion. Therefore, these data count episodes of care, not patients. Furthermore, these analyses exclude people who lived in WA or NT or had hospitalisations in WA or NT as the linkage infrastructure used to create the Refugee health Linked this data set does not currently include linkage to WA and NT hospitals data.
Data were not available to examine health and homelessness service usage at smaller geographic areas, which would have assisted in service planning. Similarly, data were not available to investigate health and homelessness service usage among priority subgroups within the humanitarian entrant populations, such as people with disability and/or people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans/transgender, intersex, queer, and other sexuality (including asexual), gender, and bodily diverse (LGBTIQ+).
There is also a gap in data availability in relation to the use of supports to assist people to access these health and homelessness services. For example, there is no information available about the cultural appropriateness of services and the use of interpreter or translation services when accessing these services.
External causes of injury and activity undertaken when injured is only available for hospitalisations. Therefore, this more detailed information is only available for more severe injuries which require hospitalisations. Investigating more detailed information on injury causes in emergency department presentations would be valuable in providing insights into targeting injury prevention information and policies for this population.
Further analysis to understand the drivers of the high rates of potentially preventable hospitalisations for other vaccine preventable conditions in this population could also be insightful.
The data presented on the impact of COVID-19 in this population is limited to counts of hospitalisations and deaths. The indications from these data would be valuable to investigate further including analyses of immunisation and antiviral uptake for these populations by smaller areas of geography, to enable targeted public health initiatives.
These analyses indicate that in humanitarian entrants, assault was a leading cause of injury hospitalisations, women and one parent families presenting to SHS, and the need for domestic violence services. Given these findings, an investigation of child welfare data in this population could be a future area of investigation.