Australian team publishes the 5W-PL protocol: linking 14 Victorian health and human services datasets to trace mental health service pathways for young people aged 12–25
The protocol describes the design of the 5W-PL study: using the Centre for Victorian Data Linkage's Victorian Linkage Map to link 14 datasets covering mortality, mental health, hospital, emergency, ambulance and human services (child protection, disability, sexual assault, homelessness, alcohol and drug) through deterministic and probabilistic methods, building a cross-sector longitudinal cohort of people born between 1970 and 2010 with service-use records from 2015 to 2025, in order to identify subgroups by care pathway, map geographical patterns of service need, and develop predictive models of service type and intensity for young people aged 12–25.