Australian Centre for Monitoring Population Health

Around 7 million people live in rural and remote areas, which encompass many diverse locations and communities. These Australians face unique challenges due to their geographic location and often have poorer health outcomes than people living in metropolitan areas.

The Dementia Awareness Survey is the largest nationally representative community survey of its kind in Australia. It collects information on how much people know about dementia and their attitudes towards dementia and people living with dementia. The survey results will help inform priorities and areas for dementia awareness initiatives and prevention activities that can reduce the risk or delay the development of dementia. 

Childhood is an important time for healthy development, learning, and establishing the foundations for future wellbeing. This article focuses on key health issues that children face.

Youth is a key transition period in a person’s life. The foundations for future health and wellbeing are also laid down at this time. This article focuses on key health issues that adolescents and young adults face.

Dementia is a significant and growing health and aged care issue in Australia that has a substantial impact on the health and quality of life of people with the condition, as well as for their family and friends. This online report provides a comprehensive picture of dementia in Australia, including the latest statistics on dementia prevalence, burden of disease, deaths, expenditure, as well as the use of health and aged care services among people with dementia and information on carers of people with dementia.

Dementia in Australia has been published as a web report since 2021. This report is updated bi-annually to include the latest data from a range of sources. For more information, see Data sources.

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) includes heart attacks and unstable angina. People who survive an ACS event are at higher risk of having another cardiovascular event in the future. This report uses linked health data to map what happened next for 35,800 people who survived an ACS hospitalisation and describes the health outcomes they experienced. Measures of interventional procedures and medication are used to describe a person’s 'treatment pathway'.

The COVID-19 Register is a linked data asset that enables evidence-based research, and public health and health system planning for current and future pandemics. This linkage project also facilitates selected information to be fed back and incorporated into the local notifiable disease systems of states and territories to improve data completeness and utility.

The first version of the linked data was first made available to approved researchers in December 2022. The linked data has since been updated to Version 2 and Version 2.5. 

The purpose of this report is to briefly describe the linkage method and process, and compare high level linkage results for previous and current versions of the COVID-19 Register. This report will be a resource for future researchers wanting to use the data.

This release includes up to 20 years of weekly health service use data by Statistical Area Level 4 geography. It includes data relevant to respiratory, cardiovascular, and mental health conditions, as well as other health conditions. The report includes data and visualisations on:

• hospitalisations
• emergency department presentations
• Medicare Benefits Schedule service claims
• Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme prescriptions dispensed.

In 2022–‍2023, people with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds were much less likely to smoke, use e cigarettes, drink alcohol at risky levels or use illicit drugs than people who were born in Australia or who mainly spoke English at home.

This report examines changes in alcohol and other drug use among people born overseas and those who mainly speak a language other than English at home between 2019 and 2022–‍2023 and identifies some areas where further research may be required.

In the 2022–‍2023 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, there was an increase in the proportion of people aged 18 and over reporting high and very high levels of psychological distress (17%) and in the proportion receiving diagnoses and treatment for mental illness (18%), compared with 2019. While use of licit and illicit drugs remains high, the proportion of people smoking daily in both groups has declined since 2019.

This report explores the use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs among people experiencing psychological distress, and those who have been diagnosed or treated for a mental health condition in the previous 12 months. While these two groups are explored separately, there is overlap between them, and comparisons between people experiencing psychological distress and people with a mental health condition should not be made directly.