Eliminating Hepatitis C in Cairns – how to reach the final 30%?

Cairns is a regional city in Far North Queensland, Australia, with a population of ~150,000 and was one of the first locations to lead a ‘micro-elimination’ response to Hepatitis C in Australia (i.e. viral elimination within a defined population, such as those residing in a geographic location). This ‘Cairns Hep C Free by 2020’ campaign was led by a strong community education component designed to improve awareness of HCV cure and address stigma and discrimination. This campaign was supported by a comprehensive, integrated HCV service delivery model involving Cairns Sexual Health Service, a hospital liver clinic, community general practitioners (GPs), the Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Services and local Prison.

Estimates to date suggest that 60 to 70 per cent of all people living with HCV in the region have been connected to treatment through this campaign. While this initial ‘go hard and go fast approach’ has been successful in achieving high treatment coverage among the affected populations in Cairns, reaching the final 30 per cent may need a different approach. This project uses 10 years of healthcare data in Cairns covering each step of the care cascade, from antibody screening, RNA testing, treatment PBS records and clinical outcomes, with the aim to evaluate the success of the ‘Cairns Hep C Free’ elimination campaign to date and help identify new avenues to reach the final 30 per cent in Cairns. 

The project will allow you to:

• develop your coding and data management skills
• learn and apply epidemiological statistics
• contribute data to decision making in an ongoing HCV elimination effort
• develop your own research questions with available data (or work with some of our pre-existing ones).