Estimating the prevalence of diabetes diagnosed in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and youth aged <25 years, across northern Australia via an audit of all available primary health care, community-based and hospital-based resources.

This is a project to work out how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, teenagers and young adults aged less than 25 years old, are there in northern Australia (Kimberley, Northern Territory, Far North Queensland) who have diabetes.

Doctors and community members living and working in these parts of Australia say that more children and young people are being diagnosed with diabetes than ever before, but an accurate number of how many young people who have diabetes in this area is not really known.

In this project, doctors and health care workers working in all the different hospitals, primary care practices and community health centres in all States across northern Australia will work out how many young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people there are with diabetes. This will be done by talking to people working in the area, looking at primary health care and hospital records and databases where they exist, and putting this all together to make sure each person with diabetes is only counted once.

Why do we need to know this? In the past diabetes usually only got diagnosed in people as they got older but now, younger people, including children, are getting diabetes. By working out how many young people there are with diabetes, this can be used to plan how to best help prevent more young people getting diabetes in the future; how to provide health services to those who already have diabetes so that they get the best care so they stay as healthy as they can; and to reduce their chances of getting other diseases which can happen together with diabetes such as problems with the eyes, heart and kidneys.