Population Health and Strategic Direction

Download WSAHS Health Inequality Profile

This report is a descriptive profile of health-related issues for Western Sydney aiming to inform planning and to highlight issues of inequality in relation to a range of health concerns, notably:

• health service utilisation
• health risk, especially key health behaviours, and
• health outcomes, specifically premature mortality

The report recognises the substantial body of research illustrating the association between a range of health outcomes and the social and economic environments within which people live and work. Underlying the policy and planning responses to this research is a concern with issues of composition of the local community (e.g., age, gender, housing, Indigenous status, health behaviour) and of context (e.g., remoteness, transport, community values and culture, availability of resources).

Contents

• Executive summary
• Community context
• Health service utilisation
• Health risk
• Health outcomes
• Demographics: people and places
• Health risk behaviour
• Hospital utilisation
• Area and age specific patterns of mortality
• Major causes of premature mortality