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Southern Synergy
Research Activities
Strategic Research and Epidemiology
Epidemiological household surveys provide important opportunities to assess the health of communities and also the effectiveness of service response to community need for care. For the first time in 1997 the Australian Government supported a major national survey of mental health problems in the Australian population. Another such survey is planned in 2007. Members of the Southern Synergy group have been involved through time in the development of instruments for this survey program and reporting based on the survey data that can be well described as health services epidemiology, that is to say using epidemiological survey data to reflect on issues such as equity and comprehensiveness of response to community need This work has a high international academic profile with some of the publications in this area being very frequently cited. The Perceived Need for Care Questionnaire that was developed for the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing is now in use in other surveys internationally and this has lead to other collaborative pieces of publication deriving from its use in other settings, for instance significant recent work on needs for mental health care amongst Canadian Servicemen soon to be published in Archives of General Psychiatry. The Southern Synergy group continue to be involved in analyses from the 1997 survey, including extending the utility of that data set for instance in regards to health economics analysis. Particularly at present the team are involved in substantial work on international comparisons, as well as participating in instrument design for the 2007 survey.
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