Injury Survivability and Remoteness
Injury survivability and long-term recovery can depend upon where you live. For example, when an injury occurs in remote and regional areas of Australia, there is an association between remoteness and in-hospital death. This association is also apparent for certain categories such as injury from falls.
The probability of survival based on the type of injury sustained (Survival Risk Ratios or SRRs) has been calculated by the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit (VISU) at MUARC for Victoria and NSW. This project would investigate potential factors that influence injury risk and injury outcomes such as long-term recovery and death in remote and regional areas, through an examination of the SRRs calculated. Various factors may contribute to higher levels of risk. Such factors may include socio-demographics; population health profile; quality of post-injury medical care and access to health services. This would provide insights on how to improve injury outcomes in remote and regional areas. For example, remote and regional areas have higher rates of specific comorbidities, such as obesity or diabetes. This could be because remoteness makes access to preventative health programs more difficult. At the same time, post-injury access to services such as rehabilitation could affect long-term recovery.
The overall aim of the project is to identify how improvements in the key factors identified and their interaction would contribute to improvements in injury survivability and long-term recovery in the event of an injury, in remote and regional areas of Australia. Identification of such factors would enable examination of their contribution to the differences in injury outcomes between metropolitan and remote and regional areas, with a particular focus on modifiable factors.
The thesis would be supervised by Associate Professor Janneke Gisolf-Berecki and Dr Angelo D'Elia.