Australian Urban Health Indicator
The challenge:
This project aims to address the challenge of measuring the impact of changes in urban environments on health and healthcare services, by creating a nationwide health data resource to inform better planning for health and social infrastructure across Australia.
Improving health and social infrastructure for all Australians is an ongoing challenge for urban and regional planners and decision-makers. Data is crucial to informed and evidence-based decision-making, however we lack a national data asset with the health indicators required to enable this.
The approach:
The Australian Urban Health Indicators (AusUrb-HI) project developed a suite of new indicator data assets to help improve health and social infrastructure planning in urban and regional areas.
The project integrated Population Health Research Network (PHRN) Health Outcomes Data with Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) Health Determinants data, including demographic, socioeconomic, health service and environmental data. This improves the understanding of the health of Australian urban and regional populations.
De-identified data was integrated in the Secure Unified Research Environment at the Sax Institute to deliver new insight by linking health outcomes and their determinants for improved health planning and decision making. The project involved three key elements:
Cancer determinants
Working with the Australian Cancer Atlas, AusUrb-HI developed indicators quantifying the association between demographic, socioeconomic, health services and environmental determinants to the incidence and survival rates for major types of cancer for urban and regional areas across Australia.
Heat health vulnerability
AusUrb-HI developed a population heat health vulnerability indicator that combines data on population demographics, socioeconomic characteristics, health and environmental conditions in order to understand the locations of greatest population vulnerability to current (and potentially future) extreme heat events.
Urban liveability and health
In collaboration with the RMIT Centre for Urban Research, AusUrb-HI generated indicators giving new insight into the liveability of Australian urban and regional areas from a health perspective.
Our collaborators:
- Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)
- Population Health Research Network (PHRN)
Status:
Complete
Related resources:
Excellent illustrative story: Understanding heat risk in NSW, Australia
AURIN project summary
ARDC project summary