Background and Aim
In Australia, testing and diagnosis for hepatitis C (HCV) has improved, yet many people do not start treatment. Health systems must support diagnosis and notification of cases into timely access to care, highlighting a crucial but under-utilised role of notification systems. Engaging people with HCV and health providers is critical to ensure system improvements address gaps in the care cascade. Connect C aims to explore community-informed changes to surveillance, follow-up, and care pathways to strengthen treatment linkage and engagement.
Methods and Analysis
Between 2024 and 2026 Connect C engaged people with lived experience, health providers, policymakers, and community organisations through co-design workshops in the Northern Territory and Queensland. Participants explored how notification systems could facilitate linkage between diagnosis and treatment, mapped care pathways, and identified barriers, including legislative and data handling requirements.
Outcomes
In both jurisdictions, communities and stakeholders strongly endorsed the model. They agreed that with community support, barriers to using notifications data more effectively (to link people into care) can be overcome. Participants valued contributing to solutions and provided clear guidance on supports needed for engagement with follow-up and treatment. Co-designed solutions clarified roles, streamlined referral pathways and embedded peer-supported approaches. Insights were consolidated into consensus statements guiding regulatory and data recording reforms, enabling systematic follow-up and linkage to care.
Conclusion and Future Actions
Centring community voices and lived experience enables meaningful reform of notifications and care systems. Embedding community health services and peer support into effective use of notifications data shifts health systems from passive reporting to actively support people into care, and for HCV, to cure. The Connect C model demonstrates how co-designed, consensus driven approaches have the potential to overcome barriers to notification data use, strengthen treatment linkage, and provide a transferrable framework for HCV elimination and other communicable diseases in Australia.