A Data-Driven, Co-Designed Model of Care to Improve Health Outcomes After Release From Prison: The HARP Trial (PID208)

12pm – 12.30pm GMT+03:00, 30 October 2025 ‐ 30 mins

Thematic Workshop Sessions

In Australia, the Justice Health Group has established the world’s largest prospective cohort study of people released from prisons: the Health After Release from Prison (HARP-4) cohort study. The HARP-4 study combines rich survey data, prison medical records, and linked administrative health and justice data from 4,232 women and men release from prisons. Building on these rich epidemiological data, we are now embarking on a national consultation process to co-design a model of care to improve the health of people released from prisons. Our model of care will be evidence-driven, culturally safe, informed by lived experience, and scalable. It will be evaluated in a randomised controlled trial with 1000 participants. We will use statewide and national linked administrative data to quantify the impact of our intervention on health outcomes, health service use, reincarceration, and whole-of-government costs.

In this presentation I will provide an overview of the HARP-4 study and key findings to date. I will describe the HARP trial, including our proposed model of care, our approach to co-design, and discuss why RCTs in this setting are both challenging and essential. The final 10 minutes of the sessions will be devoted to audience discussion, focussing on the overlapping imperatives of health and criminal justice agencies, and the importance of rigorous epidemiological and evaluation research to inform throughcare policy and practice.
 

Moderated by Michelle Carpentier