Professor

Professor

Scientia Professor

Associate Professor

Project overview:

The OASIS project will build a universal data linkage platform to understand, monitor and respond to illicit drug use, risks and health outcomes in Australia.

Substance use is the third largest contributor to disability due to poor mental health. Rapidly shifting patterns of substance use, including the confluence of illicit and licit drug markets, have changed both patterns of drug use and the nature of harms experienced. Existing research infrastructure does not have the capacity to adequately capture these emergent patterns of drug use or understand how they are associated with health and social outcomes.

Our research will transform the way substance use and related harms are conceptualised. We will create the world’s largest survey-linked data platform of people engaged in illicit drug use to provide granular data on drug use across the Australian population and comprehensive data on related health. We will apply novel methods of data modelling to identify clusters of substance use and related contextual factors that are driving both immediate and longer-term drug-related harms.

In addition, we will develop novel indirect prevalence estimation techniques to understand how many Australians are at high-risk from adverse health outcomes from drug use and how to target health care to mitigate these harms.

The data platform we create will provide an immediate new understanding of substance use in Australia, and it will also form a platform for future research and drug monitoring. We will collaborate with federal and state government agencies to ensure that the information from our database informs public policy and becomes embedded in drug and health data monitoring systems. We will also collaborate with advocacy groups, community agencies and the not-for-profit sector to translate key findings into frontline harm minimisation responses.