Compared to the general population, people with intellectual disabilities are more likely to experience multiple health disadvantages including an elevated mortality rate and lower age of death. They are also at increased risk of dying from potentially avoidable causes. In order to address these disparities, it is vital to develop a national insight into the prevalence of, and factors affecting the deaths of people with disabilities. This project was commissioned by the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) Quality and Safety Commission (The Commission), as they prepare to establish Australia’s first nationally consistent arrangement for reporting deaths of people with disability receiving NDIS funding. We supported the work of the Commission by:
- Conducting an Australia wide scoping review of causes and contributors to deaths of people with disability. The aim of the review is to provide the Commission with a national baseline picture of trends, issues and current monitoring practices relating to deaths of people with disability across Australia based on findings from existing state and territory reports.
- Providing expert guidance to inform a statistical analysis that will be undertaken by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), in the context of AIHW’s development of new national disability dataset.
- Providing expert advice to the NDIS Commission on the development by AIHW, of key performance measures that the NDIS Commission could consider incorporating into its Analytics Framework for the purposes of assisting the NDIS Commission to respond to and mitigate systemic risks of harm to people with disability.
