Objectives: To determine whether community‐based asylum seekers experience difficulty in gaining access to primary health care services, and to determine the impact of any difficulties described. Design, setting and participants: Qualitative study using semi‐structured interviews between September and November 2010. Participants were community‐based asylum seekers who attended the Asylum Seekers Centre of New South Wales, and health care practitioners and staff from the Asylum Seekers Centre and the NSW Refugee Health Service. Results: We interviewed 12 asylum seekers, three nurses, one general practitioner and one manager. Asylum seekers’ responses revealed that their access to primary health care was limited by a range of barriers including Medicare ineligibility, health care costs and the effects of social, financial and psychological stress. Limited access contributed to physical suffering and stress in affected asylum seekers. Participants providing care noted some improvement in access after recent government policy changes. However, they noted inadequate access to general practitioners, and dental, mental health and maternity care, and had difficulty negotiating pro‐bono services. Both groups commented on the low availability of interpreters. Conclusions: Access to primary health care in Australia for community‐based asylum seekers remains limited, and this has a negative effect on their physical and mental health. Further action is needed to improve the affordability of health care and to increase the provision of support services to community‐based asylum seekers; extending Medicare eligibility would be one way of achieving this.

Nonfatal strangulation (NFS) is a common form of domestic violence (DV) that frequently leaves no visible signs of injury and can be a portent for future fatality. A validated text mining approach was used to analyze a police dataset of 182,949 DV events for the presence of NFS. Results confirmed NFS within intimate partner relationships is a gendered form of violence. The presence of injury and/or other (non-NFS) forms of physical abuse, emotional/verbal/social abuse, and the perpetrator threatening to kill the victim, were associated with significantly higher odds of NFS perpetration. Police data contain rich information that can be accessed using automated methodologies such as text mining to add to our understanding of this pressing public health issue.