Research set to strengthen veteran supports
The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has recognised that, due to the nature of military service, veterans may experience greater risks detrimental to their long-term wellbeing, highlighting a need to better support the wellbeing of veterans across their lifespan. To do that, a better understanding about different veteran cohorts is needed through data and research to support analysis of veteran wellbeing.
In 2022, the DVA initiated the Longitudinal Wellbeing of Veterans and Families project with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) using the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA). DVA has been granted human research ethics approval to expand the project under section 95 of the Privacy Act 1988.
By linking DVA data to ABS PLIDA data, DVA can undertake important analysis to better understand the health and wellbeing outcomes of ADF members after they transition to civilian life, and how the utilisation of DVA services impacts on those outcomes.
Consistent with the well-established approach for linking data, the ABS will apply the Five Safes Framework to ensure all data are secure and privacy protected; this is aligned with the approach it takes for the Australian Census.
The linking process will involve an initial transfer of DVA client personal information to the ABS for linkage purposes to produce the analytical data set. Personal information is not available to the project researchers. Information used for analysis is de-identified: this means that identifying information such as name and address is removed or altered into an unidentifiable form. The de-identified analytical data is the data used by authorised project researchers.
DVA clients can choose to opt-out of having their information transferred to the ABS to enable the data linkage. Veterans who have already requested for their data to be removed from the Veterans’ Medicines Advice and Therapeutics Education Services (Veterans’ MATES) program, or who have opted out previously from public research, will be automatically removed from the data transfer unless otherwise instructed by the individual veterans.
DVA clients can opt-out by emailing privacy.enquiries@dva.gov.au. Due to processing requirements to action the request to be excluded, the cut-off date for the initial transfer will be 11 May 2025. Subsequent requests will be actioned on an annual basis, as DVA will provide annual updates of data to the ABS. Once transferred and linked, it is not possible to exclude a person from the analytical data set as it is a de-identified data set.
DVA plans to release findings through fact sheets on the DVA project page to support the health and wellbeing of veterans and veteran families.
For more information visit the Longitudinal Wellbeing of Veterans and Families project page.