Needle and Syringe Program
Victoria State
Victorian Needle and Syringe Program.
NSP Technical Specifications
| Fixed Distributed | Number of syringe barrels distributed by fixed-site NSP services. Calculation: sum of response where ReportText category is ‘N&S Out’ and where survey type is ‘fixed-site’. |
| Fixed Returned | Number of syringe barrels collected by fixed-site NSP services. Calculation: sum of response where ReportText category is ‘N&S In’ and where survey type is ‘fixed-site’. |
| Fixed Return Rate % | Fixed Returned result divided by Fixed Distributed result multiplied by 100 to return as percentage. |
| Offsite Distributed | Number of syringe barrels distributed by off-site NSP services, including foot patrol. Calculation: sum of response where ReportText category is ‘N&S Out’ and where survey type is ‘off-site’ or ‘foot patrol’. |
| Offsite Returned | Number of syringe barrels collected by off-site NSP services, including foot patrol. Calculation: sum of response where ReportText category is ‘N&S In’ and where survey type is ‘off-site’ or ‘foot patrol’. |
| Offsite Return Rate % | Off-site Returned result divided by Off-Site Distributed result multiplied by 100 to return as percentage. |
| Program Distributed | Sum of Fixed Distributed result and Offsite Distributed result. |
| Program Returned | Sum of Fixed Returned result and Offsite Returned result. |
| Program Return Rate % | Sum of Fixed Returned result and Offsite Returned result divided by Sum of Fixed Distributed result and Offsite Distributed result multiplied by 100 to return a percentage. |
Methods
Scope
AODstats provides the ability to track trends of acute harms at the community level, and help inform policy and strategies to intervene and minimise the impact or spread of these harms.
This information provides a convenient, interactive, statistical resource for policy planners, drug service providers, health professionals and other key stakeholders, interested in the harms relating to alcohol and other drug use in Victoria.
Data Analysis
For further information on the analysis, please see the methods document (the document opens in a new tab).
- Data indicator: Needle and Syringe Program
- Data Source: Needle and Syringe Program (NSP) – Victorian Department of Health.
- Details of data analysis:
NSP data have been collated from the Australian NSP Survey, an annual cross sectional survey of NSP attendees across Australia. The survey monitors behaviour indices of risk, in addition to infection prevalence of blood borne-viruses. This information is important for planning infection prevention and treatment strategies among people who inject drugs in Australia. For AODstats, only data relating to needle distribution and returns are reported.
Metrics presented
- Numbers: cell sizes less than 5 are obfuscated in line with ethics and data custodian requirements. Some other categorical data may also be obfuscated if a category can be calculated by subtracting any remaining categories from the total.
- Rates: rates are calculated in several ways. These include crude rates, age-specific rates and age and gender-standardised rates. Rates are calculated using the most recent mid-year ERP data (where practical). For visualisations and download sheets, crude rates are calculated for the total population, males and females. Age-specific rates are calculated for age groups in visualisations and download sheets. Rates reported on the AODstats population pyramid visualisation are age and gender-standardised rates. Crude rates, which can allow for adjustment of population sizes across different areas, however these do not adjust for certain demographic attributes (specifically age and sex). The advantage to using crude rates and age-specific rates are particularly important from a policy perspective, to understand what is influencing the rates. For example, it is important for policy and services to be aware if an area has more men and younger people. However, the use of age/sex-standardised rates in the population pyramids, allows for specific age and gender comparisons across areas to be made more accurately.
- Population estimates: ABS estimated resident population (ERP) on age, sex and statistical local areas is used throughout AODstats based on calendar year of data. For financial year datasets, the earliest year is used (e.g. 2012/13, 2012 ERP is used).
Limitations
There are limitations to using administrative data for purposes other than what it was originally intended when collected. This includes:
- Incomplete or missing data and inadequate coding.
- Some drugs are already in pre-determined drug categories and it is not possible to group them differently or include more specific drug information. In addition, sometimes drug information is not collected and therefore surrogate measures are used. The limitation to this is there will be events that are missed when they should be included and conversely events included when they should not be.
- Location information is dependent upon dataset and the majority of times LGA is the smallest area provided, and sometimes only state based data is available.
- Crude rates are used, which do not allow for certain demographic attributes (age and gender) to be compared accurately across areas, and also rates based on small numbers can produce unstable results. However, we have used age-specific rates for age groups, which does allow for age-specific comparisons. We have also used age and gender-standardised rates in the population pyramid.