Sexual health behaviors and contraceptive practices among Canadian childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer survivors and controls.

Social determinants of health (SDoH), including education, housing stability, employment, racism, discrimination and linguistic barriers, are known to influence access to and outcomes from healthcare across a wide range of conditions [, , ]. Despite this established consensus, Australia's population‐level health data system operates within a paradox: it excels at capturing substantive quantities of clinical and health service delivery data, such as inpatient diagnoses and procedures, emergency department triage levels, ambulatory care visits and medication dispensations [], but does not capture information on the SDoH. Consequently, predictive models may suffer from poor performance [] or, even when exhibiting good discrimination, can recommend treatments less likely to succeed when applied to patients from disadvantaged populations []. This ‘invisibility’ of crucial non‐clinical factors challenges the utility of population‐level health data, including for hospital funding models, where essential care coordination and psychosocial interventions to address issues such as housing instability or family violence, may remain unaccounted for, despite being critical to preventing readmissions and ensuring safe discharge. Health records may miss information on food insecurity, financial strain or social isolation if these data are not routinely collected in a standardised format at the point of care []. The absence of standardised SDoH data is not only a technical gap; it becomes the digital codification of the limitations of our clinical paradigm. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) notes that the overall health information landscape is fragmented, with significant inconsistencies and gaps in data collection, particularly for priority populations []. In response to this gap, several local initiatives have piloted the use of SDoH screening tools in Australian clinical settings and have demonstrated the feasibility and benefit of screening for the social determinants via a standardised approach [, ]. However, key challenges include the time required for screening, clinicians' reluctance to ask about sensitive topics without clear referral pathways, the absence of national data standards and, most critically, the lack of integration into electronic health records (EHRs) [].