Healthy North Coast has released its health needs assessment for 2025-2028, offering a comprehensive overview of the region's health priorities and challenges. This assessment, developed through extensive community engagement and data analysis, will guide future health service planning and commissioning across the North Coast.

The key findings included:

• The most common chronic conditions in general practice were anxiety, osteoarthritis, asthma, depression and osteoporosis
• The North Coast has the highest incidence of melanoma in NSW
• Fewer children on the North Coast aged 1, 2 and 5 years were fully immunised than in either NSW or Australia

There are disparities in accessing primary care and hospital services on the North Coast across geographical areas and communities, with limited access to after-hours services.

Healthy North Coast has developed 12 detailed Local Government Area (LGA) fact sheets, from Port Macquarie Hastings LGA to Tweed LGA. These fact sheets highlight unique health attributes and challenges within each community.

For example, the table below outlines the Lismore LGA risks from lifestyle habits, and compares them to the rest of NSW.

There are also fact sheets for specific health priority areas, like Aboriginal health and wellbeing, mental health, and older persons' health.

When asked, "Which do you see as the most serious health concerns in your community? The Lismore responses were:

• Mental health issues
• Lack of access to health care
• Ageing population
• Drug and alcohol use
• Lack of dental care

In Lismore, more than 1 in 5 people have two or more chronic conditions. The most common chronic conditions are anxiety and osteoarthritis.

“As a result of this process, there is a wealth of great information available that we hope will be useful for the whole community. Those employed in health, local government, education, employment and social and community services may find the resources useful for their work. I’d encourage you to jump on our website and take a look,” said Healthy North Coast CEO, Monika Wheeler.

The assessment draws on insights from over 3,200 responses from the North Coast community to Healthy North Coast’s Better Health Community Survey in 2024, plus community workshops held in Kyogle, Grafton, Macksville, and online. These contributions have been instrumental in identifying key health needs and gaps in the health system.

“We thank the community members, health professionals and service providers who generously shared their time, experiences, and knowledge in the health needs assessment process.

“Your input has been vital in shaping a local health needs assessment that reflects the diverse communities of the North Coast. It gives us a clear path forward to make sure the right services are available in the right areas, to improve health in ourregion,” added Ms Wheeler.

Healthy North Coast’s health needs assessment is undertaken every three years. Findings from previous health needs assessments have helped to shape the delivery of mental health services available via the Medicare Mental Health Phone Service, GP outreach clinics in homelessness services, the Primary Care Access initiative which offers free same-day GP appointments across the region through telehealth triage, education programs supporting immunisation skills enhancement amongst health professionals, and many more.

The full health needs assessment, along with the LGA and priority area fact sheets, are available on Healthy North Coast’s website at hnc.org.au/health-needs-assessment-25-28.