Lay summary
The New Zealand government re-introduced health targets in March 2024. Health targets were previously in place from 2007 to 2020 and remain somewhat controversial in their usefulness. Five new targets covering cancer treatment, childhood immunisation, emergency department stays, specialist assessments and treatment wait times will only be reported nationally and regionally, and in some cases by population groups.
We propose to use this activation grant to explore what data sources are available to observe the new targets for population groups not well serviced by the health system. We aim to investigate multiple data sources including the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to explore the feasibility of examining targets for specific groups such as Māori who are not enrolled with a primary care practice and those living in overcrowded conditions. This activation work will feed directly into a Health Delivery Project grant to understand inequity in progress towards health targets in Aotearoa.