Suchergebnisse

IntroductionLinked health record collections, when combined with large longitudinal surveys, are a rich research resource to inform policy development and clinical practice across multiple sectors.
Objectives and ApproachThe Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) is a national study of over 57,000 women in four cohorts. Survey data collection commenced in 1996. Over the past 20 years, ALSWH has also established an extensive data linkage program.
The aim of this poster is to provide an overview of ALSWH's program of regularly up-dated linked data collections for use in parallel with on-going surveys, and to demonstrate how data are made widely available to research collaborators.
ResultsALSWH surveys collect information on health conditions, ageing, reproductive characteristics, access to health services, lifestyle, and socio-demographic factors. Regularly updated linked national and state administrative data collections add information on health events, health outcomes, diagnoses, treatments, and patterns of service use.
ALSWH's national linked data collections, include Medicare Benefits Schedule, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the National Death Index, the Australian Cancer Database, and the National Aged Care Data Collection. State and Territory hospital collections include Admitted Patients, Emergency Department and Perinatal Data. There are also substudies, such as the Mothers and their Children's Health Study (MatCH), which involves linkage to children's educational records.
ALSWH has an internal Data Access Committee along with systems and protocols to facilitate collaborative multi-sectoral research using de-identified linked data.
Conclusion / ImplicationsAs a large scale Australian longitudinal multi-jurisdictional data linkage and sharing program, ALSWH is a useful model for anyone planning similar research.

IntroductionWith population ageing the prevalence of multi-morbidity (the co-occurrence of two or more chronic medical conditions) is increasing.
Objectives and ApproachOur goal was to use data linkage to obtain clinically validated data on the incidence of a range of common chronic conditions developed by participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (57,000 women) and hence to track the cumulative incidence of multi-morbidity over time.
ResultsThe major data sources differed for different conditions, e.g. the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme was important for identifying musculoskeletal conditions, whereas hospital admission data was crucial for identifying stroke. The most common combinations of conditions differed for women at different ages, e.g., mental health, musculoskeletal and respiratory conditions were most common for women born in 1989-95, whereas heart disease was a prominent part of multi-morbidity for women born in 1921-26. Among these older women about 50% had 3 or more chronic conditions in 2002 (when they were aged 76-81) and this increased to over 80% by 2015 (when they were 89-93). For comparison, among women born in 1973-78 fewer than 5% had 2 or more chronic conditions in 2002 (when they were aged 24-29) and this increased to about 15% in 2016 (when they were 38-43).
Conclusion / ImplicationsRecord linkage from multiple data sources, repeated over a long time span, is a powerful method for studying the development of multi-morbidity patterns in cohorts.