Authors:
Freemantle J, Heffernan B, Alpers K, Read A, Shepherd C, de Klerk N
Authors notes:
The Department for Child Protection, Government of Western Australia; 2010
Keywords:
Mortality, Children, Infants, Indigenous Australians, Western Australia
Abstract:
The Second Research Report follows the publication of the First Research Report (commissioned by the Advisory Council on the Prevention of Deaths of Children and Young People) in 2004. This report was commissioned by the Department for Child Protection as an ongoing initiative to continue the work initiated by researchers at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in the 1990s. It is the second in the series to provide a comprehensive resource to inform policy and strategies aimed at preventing deaths in infants, children and young people in Western Australia (WA) and focuses on the patterns and trends of births, and the deaths of WA born infants, children and young people, identifying the disparity between the Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal populations.
The Report contains total population data describing the maternal and infant demographic and perinatal circumstances, geographical location and the cause of every death which occurred between 1980 and 2005 (inclusive) of Western Australian infants and children and who were born between 1980 and 2004 (inclusive). These deaths do not include stillbirths.
The Report describes all‐cause and cause‐specific mortality rates between 1980 and 2005, with a particular focus on measuring the disparities in the patterns and trends of mortality of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter Aboriginal) infants, children and young people and the comparison with their non‐Aboriginal peers. The infant mortality rate was expressed as the cumulative mortality rate (CMR) per 1000 live births. The childhood mortality rate was expressed as the CMR per 1000 infant survivors and age-specific mortality as per 10,000 person years, to allow for comparisons of mortality rates over the lives of children and young people up to 25 years.
The development of the WA Infant, Child and Youth Mortality Database provides a unique resource that has the potential for ongoing and strategic research into the prevention of deaths in WA infants, children and young people.