The Asylum Seeker Integrated Healthcare Pathway: a collaborative approach to improving access to primary health care in South Eastern Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Abstract

It is important to address the health needs of asylum seekers within the early stages of their arrival in Australia, as this impacts all aspects of their resettlement. However, asylum seekers face a range of barriers to accessing timely and appropriate health care in the community. In 2012, the increasing number of asylum seekers in Australia placed additional demand on health and social services in high-settlement regions. Health providers experienced a substantial increase in Medicare ineligible clients and avoidable presentations to Emergency Departments, and the health needs of new asylum seeker arrivals were not being fully addressed. In response, South Eastern Melbourne Medicare Local, Monash Health, the Australian Red Cross and local settlement support agencies collaborated to develop an integrated healthcare pathway in South Eastern Melbourne to facilitate healthcare access for asylum seekers released from detention. From September 2012 to December 2014, a total of 951 asylum seekers transitioned through the pathway. Seventy-eight percent required primary healthcare assistance, and were provided with a service appointment within 3 weeks of their arrival in Melbourne. This initiative has demonstrated the value of partnership and collaboration when responding to emergent asylum seeker health needs.

How Are Non-Medical Settlement Service Organizations Supporting Access to Healthcare and Mental Health Services for Immigrants: A Scoping Review

“…From these, 29 full-text articles were further excluded due to relevance to setting, irrelevant intervention or wrong population. The remaining 10 articles were included in this review: Chadwick and Collins, 2015 (study 1) [ 31 ]; Cheng et al, 2019 (study 2) [ 32 ]; Frost et al, 2018 (study 3) [ 33 ]; Isaacs et al, 2013 (study 4) [ 34 ]; Isaacs et al, 2013 (study 5) [ 35 ]; Koehn et al, 2019 (study 6) [ 36 ]; McMurray et al, 2014 (study 7) [ 37 ]; Salami et al, 2019 (study 8) [ 38 ]; Torres et al, 2013 (study 9) [ 39 ]; and Torres et al, 2014 (study 10) [ 7 ]. Characteristics of included studies are summarized in Table 2 .…”

Improving primary health care quality for refugees and asylum seekers: A systematic review of interventional approaches

“…The studies rated highly on a clear statement of research aims and appropriate study design descriptions to address the stated aims, and yet, generally received an average or low score for description of the data collection methods 25–44 . The majority of the studies received low scores (0–1/3) on criteria related to sampling 25,27–68 and evidence of research stakeholders' involvement in the research design and conduct (0–1/3). We did not exclude studies based on the quality assessment; rather, the quality assessment data were used simply to indicate the strength of the available evidence.…”

“…Of the total of 55 studies included in the review, the majority n = 35 were from North America (United States and Canada) 25–30,34,35,37,39–42,44–47,49,51,52,54–57,59,62,65,66,69–75 ; 14 were from countries in Europe including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Italy 31–33,38,48,53,60,61,63,64,68,76–78 ; and 6 were from Australia 36,43,50,58,67,79 . All articles were published between 1992 and 2020.…”

“…The majority of the studies (29/55 studies) identified in this review discussed the involvement of doctors engaging with the interventions 25–29,31,32,34–37,41,43,46,47,50,53,56,58,67,69,70,74,76–79 . Health care professionals involved in the interventions also included nurses or nurse practitioners (11/55 studies), 26,28,29,31,35,36,48,50,58,77,78 undergraduate students (6/55 studies), 29,30,36,40,57,78 patient navigator roles/community health workers (4/55 studies), 39,42,44,46 clinical psychologists (4/55 studies), 35,47,54,74 pharmacists (3/55 studies), 38,62,71 physiotherapists and/or exercise specialists (3/55 studies), 28,36,64 a health care advisor or a refugee health facilitator role (2/55 studies), 41,79 midwives (1/55 studies), 36 dentists (1/55 studies) 36 and family therapists (1/55 studies) 45 . Some interventions were self‐directed and were online and/or computer based (10/55 studies) 33,52,53,55,57,60,66,67,69,72 .…”

High Luminous Efficacy Phosphor-Converted Mass-Produced White LEDs Achieved by AlN Prebuffer and Transitional-Refraction-Index Patterned Sapphire Substrate

“…A fundamental transformation of lighting technology was triggered in the early 1990s with the emerging InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Nowadays LEDs are widely used in the fields of indoor and outdoor lighting [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], full-color displays [ 4 , 5 , 6 ], and applications beyond lighting [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] because of the inherent advantages of nitride LEDs, including high efficiency, robustness, low heat output, nontoxicity, and long life span [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Assuming that solid-state lighting sources could replace conventional light sources worldwide, energy consumption would be remarkably reduced.…”