The Population Profile of the North Eastern Public Health Unit Catchment Area, General Report, January 2025 provides a single point of access to a wide range of population health data relevant to the population who live in the North Eastern Public Health Unit (NEPHU) catchment area.
The report collates indicators from existing data sets to provide a baseline understanding of the demography, determinants of health, health-seeking and health-risk behaviours, health services use and health outcomes for residents of the NEPHU catchment area.
The report demonstrates that the people who live in the NEPHU catchment area are highly diverse across many key determinants of health and wellbeing. It also highlights where there is minimal information available, such as about people with disability or those seeking asylum.
The profile will inform the prevention, promotion and health protection work that is undertaken by the NEPHU team, often in partnership with a wide range of organisations. It also provides useful insights into the communities and populations that are served by a large range of organisations across the catchment.
The profile should be considered as a point in time snapshot, which will be added to and changed as additional data becomes available.
Key features of the profile
- A technical report: The profile is a technical report and is not necessarily intended to be read end-to-end, but rather may serve as a resource that can be referenced to explore specific topics of interest. Links to relevant data sources are provided to facilitate ease of access for more detailed interrogation. Section Summaries are available at the beginning of each section for a synopsis of all indicators.
- A preventive health lens: The data and indicators within this report have been selected with a preventive health focus. It is now well accepted that there are many factors, or ‘determinants’, that can influence the health of individuals and populations, in positive or negative ways. These factors, known as ‘determinants of health’, include the social, environmental, cultural, biomedical, commercial and digital factors in our lives. Population insights gained through this profile can inform programs and activities that may address these ‘upstream’ determinants and reduce inequities across the catchment.
- A regional perspective: As a public health unit, positioned in the ‘regional’ tier of the Victorian public health framework, NEPHU can contribute to system wide changes through collective action, and also support local place-based solutions. Where able, data available at an LGA or more granular level (e.g. postcode) is presented to represent the NEPHU catchment area and population. Direct LGA-to-LGA comparisons are not a specific purpose of this report, and these comparisons are not valid for many indicators due to sampling differences between LGAs. The profile allows readers to independently explore lines of inquiry that arise from the data presented about their populations of interest.
The Population Profile of the North Eastern Public Health Unit Catchment Area – General Report was prepared by the Medical and Epidemiology Branch of the North Eastern Public Health Unit.
