Image

About

This research aims to identify the demand for asthma-related health service usage in the months, up to two years, after the black summer bushfires. The health service outcomes investigated include pharmaceutical dispensations, asthma-specific general practitioner services, emergency department visits, hospitalisations and deaths. The planned analysis will examine how service demand has changed after the fires and how the demand for services varied with exposure to bushfire smoke and across selected socioeconomic subpopulations when controlling for smoke exposure.

The results will help with the longer-term planning of treatment services in the aftermath of catastrophic bushfire events such as the black summer and allow for calculating the total costs of these events.

Bio

Cathy is a PhD candidate researching the long-term asthma-related health service impacts of exposure to smoke during catastrophic fire events such as the Black Summer fires of 2019-20. This work is being conducted by analysing a range of linked government administrative datasets.

Cathy has experience in analysing and reporting on both survey and administrative health-related data through her work at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.