School of Population Health
The six themes are strongly interdependent and involve close contact with clinical collaborators, health system decision-makers and community interests.
- Inequalities in health care
- Preventable inpatient time
- Promoting best practice in surgical and procedural care
- Clinical safety and post-implementation surveillance
- Improving medication safety
- Methodological developments
Theme 1: Inequalities in health care
- To measure rates of utilisation and outcomes of health care for selected conditions and procedures, according to geocoded CD-based indices of locational and social disadvantage, and possession of private health cover.
- To measure rates of utilisation of health care in the last years of life in patients who die of the same underlying cause at the same age, according to locational and social disadvantage and private health cover.
- To measure the rate of migration of rural and remote residents towards population centres following the occurrence of serious illness, according to disease type and time since diagnosis.
Theme 2: Preventable inpatient time
- To develop and parameterise a model to quantify preventable inpatient time for the Australian health system, based on international research review and empirical data from the WA Linked Database.
- To measure the associations of morbidity and mortality outcomes with intensity of primary medical care in patients with diabetes mellitus, using cross-jurisdictional linkage with Commonwealth MBS and PBS data.
Theme 3: Promoting best practice in surgical and procedural care
- To measure the underlying rate of disease occurrence, the utilisation and outcomes of inpatient and procedural care, according to surgical and medical specialty group, and the risks of adverse events following intervention.
- To compare outcomes of surgical procedures in WA with international standards, to establish benchmarks where none exist and to disseminate results to consumers, the medical profession and health system decision-makers.
Theme 4: Clinical safety and post-implementation surveillance
- To measure the relative risk of prostate cancer in men following vasectomy, using cohort and case-control studies designed to reduce the potential for detection bias.
- To establish links to measure cancer incidence, hospital morbidity and mortality risks in a cohort of women exposed to reproductive technology.
Theme 5: Medication safety and pharmaco-epidemiology
- To evaluate high risk medications and unplanned hospitalisation in seniors.
- To investigate the effects of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMS) in seniors.
- To determine the adequacy of laboratory monitoring of anticoagulation intensity in seniors.
Theme 6: Methodological developments
- To trial linkage of the WA Linked Database to Commonwealth MBS and PBS data and family linkage.
- To develop methods of incorporating linkage weights into estimation of the effect measures.
School of Population Health
University information
CRICOS Code: 00126G
