Addressing disability-related health inequities: a methods paper on enhancing the contribution of public health data science through co-designed mixed methods research

People with disabilities are a population group that experiences significant health inequities. Increasing evidence demonstrates these inequities stem from systemic barriers in attaining human rights, specifically in relation to the social determinants of health. Yet there is a lack of data driven evidence to inform solutions. The use of linked population health data is increasingly seen as offering potential to generate evidence to inform policy and interventions targeting socially driven inequities. Achieving more equitable solutions, however, requires researchers to adopt human-rights informed frameworks and work in partnership with the people most impacted by inequities and government representatives tasked with developing policy responses. Co-design methodology can support this, but its use within data science, particularly within quantitative and mixed methods research, is not well documented to date. This methods paper responds to this gap by describing the IMPACT Project: a co-designed project that aims to identify and model the impact of hypothetical policy interventions in relation to mental health inequities experienced by people with disability. We reflect on Australia’s novel advances in data linkage and the rationale, opportunities, challenges and our approach to co-design in integrating data linkage techniques in parallel with qualitative approaches in pursuit of a health equity agenda