Wollongong's Health Services: The Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District

The Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, the NSW Health entity responsible for the public hospital and community health services for the Wollongong, the Illawarra, and the Shoalhaven communities from Port Kembla in the north to Nowra and the southern Shoalhaven, manages the health needs of a population that includes the health burden of the post-industrial working-class communities of the inner Wollongong suburbs alongside the lifestyle health profile of the coastal communities and the growing health demands of the ageing population that the demographic transition of the Illawarra is creating. The balance of these different health profiles and the geographic spread from the northern industrial suburbs to the southern coastal communities creates the management complexity that the health district addresses through the hospital network, the community health services, and the specialist programs that the diverse population requires.

Wollongong Hospital, the principal acute hospital at Loftus Street in the Wollongong CBD and the trauma centre for the Illawarra and the southern NSW coast, provides the emergency, surgical, and specialist care that the 300,000-person catchment requires for the most complex presentations that the smaller hospitals in Shellharbour, Bulli, and the Shoalhaven cannot manage locally. The hospital's emergency department, one of the busiest in regional New South Wales, manages the complexity of the trauma, the medical emergency, and the mental health presentations that a large coastal industrial city with the accident rates of the Port Kembla port and industrial precinct alongside the surf beach and outdoor recreation injuries of the coastal community generates.

The mental health services of the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, including the Shellharbour Mental Health Inpatient Unit and the community mental health teams that provide the outreach and the ongoing support for the people with severe and persistent mental illness in the Wollongong and the Illawarra communities, address the mental health burden that the post-industrial community's socioeconomic disadvantage, the substance use that the accessible hospitality and the social isolation create, and the general population mental health demand generate for the services that must manage the complexity of the most acute needs within the resources that the health system provides.

The University of Wollongong's medical and health science programs, delivered in partnership with the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, provide the clinical training and the research partnership that creates the evidence base for the quality improvements and the service innovations that the health district implements. The UOW's Graduate School of Medicine, providing the postgraduate medical program that accepts the science graduates into the accelerated medical program, contributes the medical workforce pipeline that the Illawarra health system draws from and that the UOW's research partnerships with the clinical teams develop the evidence base for.

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