Australia spent nearly $181 billion on health in 2016–17. This is more than $7,400 per person and 10% of overall economic activity. This represents higher growth in spending than in recent years.

A three year partnership between the DVA and AIHW has been established to run from 2017–18 to 2019–20, with the aim of building a comprehensive profile of the health and welfare of Australia’s veteran population.

This is the first report from an Australian-first project combining data from the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, BreastScreen Australia, and the National Cervical Screening Program. Screen-detected breast, cervical and bowel cancers were less likely to cause death than non-screen-detected cancers, with analyses also revealing novel patterns in screening behaviour.

Older people make up a considerable proportion of Australia’s population—in 2017, over 1 in 7 people were aged 65 and over. This report provides an overview of this diverse and growing population group through a range of topics. These outline older people’s demographic characteristics, health status, and service use.

This report presents data on returns to sentenced supervision using measures developed as part of a related Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) project—Using the Juvenile Justice National Minimum Data Set to measure juvenile recidivism.