Updated reports will be published biennially. Australia's Children uses as its major sources all deaths registered in Australia, information on virtually all hospital admissions to private and public hospitals, and information gleaned from the Australian Health Survey conducted approximately every five years. In addition, data from the Western Australian Child Health Survey, although specific to WA, sheds light on some aspects of child health for which information is not currently available at the national level. It will come as no surprise that injuries are responsible for most deaths of children between 1 and 14 years of age.
Injuries also account for a significant proportion of disease or illness in children.
Over half of this group also reported that their children had a current long term condition. Hospitalisations data, which records the number of episodes of hospital admission over a 12 month period, showed injury to be an important cause of hospitalisation. Among the general observations made in the report is that boys consistently have higher morbidity rates than girls and that respiratory illness is the major illness group amongst kids. For example, the chapter on mental health problems includes information on self-inflicted injury and suicide. The available data were mined in order to look at the key areas of information about injuries.