Future directions
This report has provided an overview of non-DVA clients with a focus on their demographics, long-term health conditions, health service use and deaths by suicide. Further, it has also included analysis on earlier DVA clients to provide more information on veterans who have not recently interacted with DVA.
There was an important limitation in the analysis presented in this report because it was limited to veterans who have served since 1985 only. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2021 Census of Population and Housing showed that there were more than half a million Australians (581,000) who have served, or are currently serving, in the ADF and were alive in August 2021 (Service with the Australian Defence Force: Census, 2021).
Based on Defence personnel data at the end of 2021 there were around 100,000 current serving members and 270,000 ex-serving members who had separated since 1985. This means there were approximately another 210,000 ex-serving members who separated prior to 1985, according to the Census data.
Prior to the 2021 Census, which was the first to include a question about ADF service, there was not a robust way to identify people who separated from the ADF prior to 1985 due to limitations in Defence personnel data. As ex-serving members who separated from the ADF prior to 1985 are not included in the Defence personnel data extract, they have also not been able to be linked to DVA client data to determine whether they are non-DVA clients or DVA clients. In the future it could be possible to link DVA client data with Census data to better understand about this missing group.
More research is possible to better understand the health and welfare of veterans who are non-DVA clients or earlier DVA clients. Avenues for further research could include:
- Socioeconomic characteristics – analysis of non-DVA clients through the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA)
- Sources of income – may be of interest as non-DVA clients do not receive financial assistance from DVA
- Health services use – may be of interest as non-DVA clients are not receiving DVA-funded health services
- DVA client status of pre-1985 veterans and DVA client status of family members of veterans
- Use of aged care services – may be of interest as the ex-serving population is ageing over time
- Other data sources that are available in PLIDA as these can provide insights on all veterans including the pre-1985 cohort.
As part of this research, AIHW has sought to identify the data sources that would enable health and welfare analysis of non-DVA clients. Table 2 in Technical notes outlines data sources that could be used for further research when linked with DVA client data.