Australia: the healthiest country by 2020
National Preventative Health Strategy – the roadmap for action
8.4 - Data, surveillance and monitoring
Table of contents
- Chair's Foreword
Chapter 1: Building preventative health in Australian communities
1 - Vision, purpose and call to action- 2 - Australia’s response to the call to action
- 3 - The need for action
- 4 - What we know: prevention works
- 5 - Taking action
- 6 - A conceptual framework for the Strategy
- 7 - The roadmap for prevention
- 8 - Ensuring effective implementation
- 9 - Conclusion – a call to action
- References
- Chapter 2: Obesity in Australia: A need for urgent action
- Chapter 3: Tobacco: Towards world’s best practice in tobacco control
- Chapter 4: Alcohol: Reshaping the drinking culture in Australia
- Appendices
'Rather than rejecting innovation, we need to provide support to adequately measure and evaluate the impact of untested strategies and approaches' (Quote from submission)
'Research, reliable data gathering and evaluation…to sustain the most productive forms of support, interventions and clinical practice…' (Quote from submission)
Through the 2008–09 COAG Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health, the Australian Government has recognised the important role national surveillance systems play in the areas of obesity, tobacco and alcohol. However, there is currently great variation in the data available to assist in the development of baselines for comparison and tracking of trends via surveillance and monitoring in these areas.
The Taskforce emphasises the essential nature of systems with the capacity to provide this information at national, state and local levels, as well as other key groups such as Indigenous Australians, other disadvantaged populations, and children and adolescents.
To achieve this, strategic investment and partnerships are required to develop and implement standardised and harmonised data collection and analysis mechanisms across multiple jurisdictions. The involvement of data and surveillance agencies, such as the ABS, AIHW, NHMRC, the new NPA, Australian Population Health Development Principal Committee (APHDPTC) and Population Health Information Development Group (PHIDG), along with relevant levels and sectors of government and key agencies from other sectors (for example, NGOs, universities and, if appropriate, industry), will be essential to achieve these outcomes.
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Comprehensive national surveillance systems for obesity, tobacco and alcohol
Comprehensive national surveillance systems for obesity, tobacco and alcohol are essential tools for the purposes of collecting and managing relevant datasets, monitoring progress against specified targets and reporting trend information over time. To be effective, these systems should have the capacity to:- Collect and report against behavioural, environmental and biomedical risk factors relevant to obesity, tobacco and alcohol
- Expand and incorporate newly identified and/or revised indicators into datasets as required and appropriate
- Become permanent systems of data collection undertaken at predetermined regular intervals
- Provide representative data for the whole of population and also populations of interest (for example, Indigenous, children and adolescents, the disadvantaged)
- Complement and build upon other existing data collection and monitoring mechanisms as required and appropriate
Where issues exist in regard to the potential for overlap and duplication with existing data collection and monitoring mechanisms (for example, the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey Program and ABS dataset on alcohol consumption in Australia), these will need to be resolved.
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Wholesale and retail sales datasets
Wholesale and sales data should be an integral component of a comprehensive national surveillance system, particularly in the areas of tobacco and alcohol. While this information is already collected by industry for the purposes of marketing development and monitoring sales, these datasets are not readily accessible by government or researchers and policy makers in the public health sector. Access to these datasets would facilitate monitoring and surveillance functions, as well as better inform effective policy directions in these areas.Other relevant datasets
Other datasets from other sectors can provide further information about the impacts of obesity, tobacco and alcohol, and should form part of a comprehensive surveillance system. For example, a comprehensive national surveillance system for alcohol should include data on consumption as well as health and social impacts, and could potentially include:- Expanded collection of drinking patterns data
- Police datasets – random breath testing, ignition interlock devices and crimes against property and the person
- Child and family welfare agencies datasets
- Health services datasets – hospitals, primary care services, ambulance services and specialist treatment services
- Local government datasets – management of public space, clean-up costs, noise issues and enforcement of local laws
- Other relevant datasets – fire services, property insurance and medical insurance
Other national requirements for monitoring and surveillance
There are a number of other shortcomings at the national level which need to be rectified in order to achieve comprehensive surveillance systems for obesity, tobacco and alcohol. These include:- Development of national data linkage systems, for health and non-health data, in order to develop nationally representative and consistent baseline information
- Establishing a national health equity surveillance system, with routine collection and analysis of inequities in health outcomes, the behavioural risk factors and their social determinants
- The development, management and benchmarking of evaluation tools to assess effectiveness and impact of public health interventions