Improving ethnocultural data to inform public health responses to communicable diseases in Australia

Abstract

It is well established that ethnocultural groups of migrants are associated with a differential risk of communicable disease, including measles, tuberculosis and hepatitis B. Global public health agencies1 are now focusing on improving the collection of ethnocultural data to better define communicable disease risk in migrant populations to support community-level disease prevention and control. In Australia, there is no national strategy to support the collection of ethnocultural data in communicable disease surveillance. Ethnocultural data refers to any data that identifies an individual's cultural heritage, background or affiliation, e.g. country of birth (COB); language spoken at home (LSH) or religious affiliation etc. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status is routinely collected in communicable disease surveillance. COB is commonly collected for most notifiable diseases, however other variables used to describe the ethnocultural identity of cases vary (Box 1). These data are collected either via general practitioners recording this information on the disease notification form and/or public health unit staff recording the data during follow-up interviews with individual cases.