Sarah Thackway

The New South Wales Department of Health | NSW · Centre for Epidemiology & Evidence

Objectives: The NSW Health COVID-19 Research Program was established in April 2020 to contribute to minimising the health, social and economic impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in New South Wales (NSW). This paper describes the establishment and implemention of one element of the Program, the Emergency Response Priority R...

Background: There is a pressing need for policy makers to demonstrate progress made on investments in prevention, but few examples of monitoring systems capable of tracking population-level prevention policies and programs and their implementation. In New South Wales, Australia, the scale up of childhood obesity prevention programs to over 6000 ch...

Implementing programs at scale has become a vital part of the government response to the continuing childhood obesity epidemic. We are studying the largest ever scale-up of school and child care obesity prevention programs in Australia. Health promotion teams support primary schools and early childhood services in their area to achieve a number of...

Background: Bespoke electronic information management systems are being used for large-scale implementation delivery of population health programs. They record sites reached, coordinate activity, and track target achievement. However, many systems have been abandoned or failed to integrate into practice. We investigated the unusual endurance of an...

Background Evidence generation partnerships between researchers and policy-makers are a potential method for producing more relevant research with greater potential to impact on policy and practice. Little is known about how such partnerships are enacted in practice, however, or how to increase their effectiveness. We aimed to determine why researc...

Background A number of ways to conduct research are designed to maximise the likelihood that evidence from research is quickly transferred into practice. This includes action research and partnership research between researchers and policy makers. Such approaches focus research effort on questions of highest relevance to practice and policy so as t...

Objectives: The Prevention Research Support Program (PRSP) is a New South Wales (NSW) Ministry of Health funding scheme. The scheme aims to build capability, and strengthen prevention and early intervention research that is important to the NSW public health system (NSW Health) and that leads to improved health and reduced health inequities for th...

Introduction: Childhood obesity prevalence is an issue of international public health concern and governments have a significant role to play in its reduction. The Healthy Children Initiative (HCI) has been delivered in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, since 2011 to support implementation of childhood obesity prevention programs at scale. Conseque...

Background The effectiveness of many interventions to promote health and prevent disease has been well established. The imperative has therefore shifted from amassing evidence about efficacy to scale-up to maximise population-level health gains. Electronic implementation monitoring, or ‘e-monitoring’, systems have been designed to assist and track...

There is a growing body of literature about the barriers to, and enablers of, the use of research evidence in policy and practice. Research funders are in a unique position to influence activities aimed at promoting research use. During the past decade, NSW (New South Wales) Health has systematically built and invested in an integrated population a...

There is often a disconnection between the creation of evidence and its use in policy and practice. Cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary partnership research, founded on shared governance and coproduction, is considered to be one of the most effective means of overcoming this research–policy–practice disconnect. Similar to a number of funding bodies i...

Objectives Despite being one of the healthiest countries in the world, Australia displays substantial mortality differentials by socioeconomic disadvantage, remoteness and sex. In this study, we examined how these mortality differentials translated to differences in life expectancy between 2001 and 2012. Design and setting Population-based study u...

Background: Despite Australia’s success in reducing total population smoking prevalence, the prevalence among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Aboriginal) people remains high. A comprehensive framework to guide and monitor Aboriginal tobacco control efforts is needed to assist with “Closing the Gap” in health. Aim: We describe the process us...

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Introduction and aims: Acute harm from heavy drinking episodes is an increasing focus of public health policy, but capturing timely data on acute harms in the population is challenging. This study aimed to evaluate the precision of readily available administrative emergency department (ED) data in public health surveillance of acute alcohol harms....

Issue addressed: An organisational culture that values and uses research and evaluation (R&E) evidence to inform policy and practice is fundamental to improving health outcomes. The 2016 NSW Government Program Evaluation Guidelines recommend investment in training and development to improve evaluation capacity. The purpose of this paper is to outli...

Background: The Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor study 2013 (GBD 2013) is the first of a series of annual updates of the GBD. Risk factor quantification, particularly of modifiable risk factors, can help to identify emerging threats to population health and opportunities for prevention. The GBD 2013 provides a timely opportunity...

Death certificates provide an invaluable source for mortality statistics which can be used for surveillance and early warnings of increases in disease activity and to support the development and monitoring of prevention or response strategies. However, their value can be realised only if accurate, quantitative data can be extracted from death certi...

Aim: Liveable communities create the conditions to optimise health and wellbeing outcomes in residents by influencing various social determinants of health - for example, neighbourhood walkability and access to public transport, public open space, local amenities, and social and community facilities. This study will develop national liveability in...

INTRODUCTION: Governments in different countries have committed to better use of evidence from research in policy. Although many programmes are directed at assisting agencies to better use research, there have been few tests of the effectiveness of such programmes. This paper describes the protocol for SPIRIT (Supporting Policy In health with Rese...

Background Historically, counting influenza recorded in administrative health outcome databases has been considered insufficient to estimate influenza attributable morbidity and mortality in populations. We used database record linkage to evaluate whether modern databases have similar limitations. Methods Person-level records were linked across da...

Administrative and vital statistics databases are frequently used for public health surveillance of influenza incidence and outcomes. We used population based, probabilistic record linkage of laboratory diagnosed influenza, emergency department, hospital admission and death registration databases to determine how frequently laboratory diagnosed inf...

Background In Australia telephone surveys have been the method of choice for ongoing jurisdictional population health surveys. Although it was estimated in 2011 that nearly 20% of the Australian population were mobile-only phone users, the inclusion of mobile phone numbers into these existing landline population health surveys has not occurred. Thi...

To rapidly describe the epidemiology of influenza-like illness (ILI) during the 2009 winter epidemic of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus in New South Wales, Australia, we used results of a continuous population health survey. During July-September 2009, ILI was experienced by 23% of the population. Among these persons, 51% were unable to undertake normal...

A health impact assessment (HIA) was conducted on a local government urban proposal entitled “The Blue Mile, Wollongong City Foreshore Project”. Findings from the HIA showed that the Foreshore Project had the potential to benefit the health of residents and visitors by increasing opportunities for physical activity and social cohesion. The HIA also...

First para from Executive Summary: The results of the second phase of a two-phase project to develop a public health classification are presented in this report. The Public Health Classifications Project aimed to ‘develop and endorse a higher level classification that captures the breadth and scope of public health activity and provides a unified f...

A range of surveillance systems were used to assess the progression and impact of the first wave of pandemic H1N1 influenza in New South Wales, Australia during the southern hemisphere winter. Surveillance methods included laboratory notifications, near real-time emergency department syndromic surveillance, ambulance despatch surveillance, death ce...

Mass gatherings have been defined by the World Health Organisation as "events attended by a sufficient number of people to strain the planning and response resources of a community, state or nation". This paper explores the public health response to mass gatherings in Sydney, the factors that influenced the extent of deployment of resources and the...

To describe the main differences between conducting a rapid health impact assessment (HIA) and an intermediate HIA on foreshore development plans and their feasibility from a health service perspective. A rapid HIA and an intermediate HIA were undertaken on two foreshore development plans. The main differences between the two HIAs were in the ident...

This article describes a prospective health impact assessment (HIA) on a local government environmental management plan, the Shellharbour Foreshore Management Plan (SFM Plan). The health outcomes of interest were physical activity and social cohesion. The procedures undertaken include: screening; scoping; assessment of potential health impacts; neg...

This paper provides a brief overview of an intermediate health impact assessment (HIA) conducted collaboratively with local government. The focus is on the lessons learnt; the full details of the process and findings have been described elsewhere.

To describe the development of the public health surveillance system for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games; document its major findings; and discuss the implications for public health surveillance for future events. Planning for the system took almost three years. Its major components included increased surveillance of communicable diseases; presentati...

To describe presentations to emergency departments during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games for conditions related to the use of illicit drugs; to discuss the implications of such presentations for surveillance and public health action at similar events in the future. Identification of target presentations in sentinel emergency departments; entry of da...

This article briefly describes the outcome of the NSW Health preparations for health surveillance during the Sydney Games. Overviews of the planning process can be found in the August 2000 edition of the NSW Public Health Bulletin.

Review empirical evidence for a relationship between psychosocial factors and breast cancer development. Standardised quality assessment criteria were utilised to assess the evidence of psychosocial predictors of breast cancer development in the following domains: (a) stressful life events, (b) coping style, (c) social support, and (d) emotional an...

The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games (the XXVII Olympiad) will be the biggest peacetime event ever held in Australia. During the Games, all public health decisions will be centralised, with daily briefing sessions held to review emerging public health issues and facilitate responses. Infectious diseases will be monitored and reported through the Olympic S...

This article describes the Olympic Surveillance System developed by NSW Health to monitor the health of the population of Sydney during the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The surveillance system will be the most comprehensive ever undertaken in NSW and will provide more coverage than the systems used during previous Olympic Games.

During the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, nine cruise ships will be berthed in Sydney Harbour, acting as floating hotels for an estimated 32 000 guests. Outbreaks of disease including gastroenteritis, Legionnaire’s disease, influenza, and tuberculosis (TB) are well documented aboard cruise ships, and the closed environment aboard the shi...

NSW Health is responsible for providing public health services to support Olympic and Paralympic venues under SOCOG’s jurisdiction.

The incidence of hepatitis A virus (HAV) in south-eastern Sydney is one of the highest in Australia with large outbreaks previously associated with male-to-male sexual contact. We report HAV notification trends over the period 1 June 1997 to 31 May 1999 for this location. In the first twelve-month period, 233 cases were notified (crude rate 30.5/10...

This article describes heroin use and related harm in NSW, using data from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS). It is the second in a series of articles that provide information and commentary on drug and alcohol use.

This is the first in a series of articles providing a commentary on drug and alcohol use in NSW. The series will provide an overview of the use of both licit and illicit drugs in NSW with special features on licit drugs (alcohol and tobacco) and illicit drugs (heroin and other drugs), with information sourced primarily from the 1998 National Drug S...

To measure fertility and birth rates and to describe the reproductive histories of women diagnosed with HIV-1 infection in Australia. The medical records of 294 women with HIV-1 infection in four states of Australia were reviewed. Expected fertility and birth rates were calculated using national statistics. In the study population, 152 (52%) women...