Home to more than three million people and representing about one third of the New South Wales (NSW) population, regional NSW encompasses all regional, rural and remote areas.

The concept of rural, regional and remoteness can be considered using different classification methods. In NSW, there are 15 Local Health Districts (LHDs) responsible for providing health services in a wide range of settings, from primary health care posts in the remote outback to metropolitan tertiary health centres. Nine of these LHDs are classified as regional.

Another framework for classifying regional areas that is widely used in Australia is the Australian Statistical Geographic Standard (ASGS) remoteness categories, where Statistical Areas are grouped based on their Accessibility/Remoteness Index for Australia Plus (ARIA Plus) score. The ARIA Plus is a remoteness index value (or score) based on road distance to major service centres. The ASGS remoteness categories include: major cities, inner regional, outer regional, remote and very remote.

Many HealthStats NSW indicators can be viewed by LHD, by Regional Health Districts and by remoteness categories. Further information about these frameworks is outlined in the data considerations below.

The following Local Health Districts are classified as regional:

To learn more about data in your local health district, click on the relevant link above. To learn more about regional health data, see the A-Z list of indicators below.

Regional health

Data for NSW