20-21 March 2002, Potts Point, Sydney, New South Wales

PHIDU produced the Proceedings for the Symposium on Health Data Linkage: Its value for Australian health policy development and policy relevant research to provide access to the papers delivered at the Symposium held on 20-21 March 2002 in Sydney, New South Wales. Information has been reproduced as submitted by the author(s). The contents of each of the papers are therefore the sole responsibility of the presenting author(s). Readers seeking further information are encouraged to contact the relevant author(s) directly. Information provided in the proceedings includes: a copy of the program as published, the abstracts, and the papers.

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Occasional Paper No. 1

Australia's Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders have the poorest health of any group in Australia. This has been the case for many years. Given that Australia has not made the advances in Indigenous health achieved in comparable countries (such as Canada, the United States and New Zealand), it is likely to be the case for some time.

This report presents data describing one outcome of that poor health, namely premature deaths of Indigenous people. It examines the higher death rates experienced by Indigenous people in the context of socioeconomic disadvantage and geographic location (in particular, remoteness). The measures of disadvantage and location are, themselves, a reflection of the continuing historical and cultural environment in which Australia?s Indigenous peoples have lived since colonisation. As such they cannot fully explain why Indigenous death rates are as high as they are; nor can they explain why death rates for Indigenous people are so much higher than for the most disadvantaged non-Indigenous populations. To do that requires an understanding of the historical and cultural environment, a discussion which is beyond the scope of this report, but which has been addressed by others (HREOC 1997; PHAA Inc. 1997; Bartlett 1999). Data analysis can, however, inform our understanding of the extent and nature of differences in variations in Indigenous and non-Indigenous mortality.

Authored by PHIDU