Leaving no-one behind

Informing Indigenous aged care with big data
Leaving no-one behind
Project Status: In progress
Project administered by: SAHMRI

Leaving no-one behind responds to calls for evidence-driven reforms in aged care from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the Indigenous community. The Royal Commission identified the need to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for older Indigenous Australians.

Our overarching goal is to improve the experiences and health outcomes of Indigenous people in aged care. This will be achieved by:

  • Examining the barriers and equity of access to national government-subsidised aged care services by Indigenous people. We hypothesise that older Indigenous Australians encounter barriers in accessing aged care services and that differential system, individual, and geographical access factors affect health outcomes.
  • Investigating the quality and safety of aged care services received by Indigenous people. We hypothesise that Indigenous Australians are at higher risk of experiencing poor quality and unsafe care than the general population and that this varies by facility and region.
  • Identifying whether the care received by Indigenous people in aged care meets their physical, clinical and psychosocial needs. We hypothesise that there are likely to be significant areas in need of improvement in relation to the care of Indigenous Australians with chronic conditions such as dementia, diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease.

This project is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council