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Lost and found: improving ascertainment of refugee-background Australians in population datasets

Georgia A Paxton, Margaret P Kay and Ignacio Correa-Velez
Med J Aust 2012; 197 (10): . || doi: 10.5694/mja12.10878
Published online: 19 November 2012

To the Editor: Refugee health is an emerging area of clinical care. Over 200 000 humanitarian entrants have settled in Australia over the past 15 years, and the annual humanitarian intake has recently increased to 20 000 people.1 While there is (delayed) information on post-arrival refugee health screening, little is known about the longitudinal outcomes or use of health services in refugee-background Australians, and they remain invisible in existing population datasets.2 This is a crucial information gap, with significant implications for health care and health policy.


  • 1 General Medicine, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, VIC.
  • 2 Discipline of General Practice, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD.
  • 3 School of Public Health and Social Work, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD.


Correspondence: Georgia.paxton@rch.org.au

Competing interests:

No relevant disclosures.

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