Understanding

Australia’s health

This presentation was developed by The AIHW Education Team

and presented at the Home Economics VCE Health and Human Development Student Day Out 2011

education@aihw.gov.au

What do we know about

Australia’s health?

• Life expectancy is the average number of years of life

remaining to a person at any specified age.

• Overall, Australians enjoy one of the highest life expectancies

in the world.

• 81.4 years for males and females combined—second only to

Japan, at 82.6 years (OECD 2009b).

Males Females

@ birth 79.2 83.7

@ 30yrs 80.3 84.5

@ 65yrs 83.6 86.6

@ 85yrs 90.9 92.0

Life expectancy

Where we rank in the world…

What is burden of disease?

You get a disease or injury…

you get better

you die (probably earlier than expected)

you don’t get better (disability)

you get worse (more disability)

Burden of disease

• How does a Government know where to spend their

health $$?

• Allocating health $$ requires information about which

conditions have the greatest effect on Australians and

where the most gains can be made.

• How do we measure the burden of having arthritis vs

cancer???

DALYs

• A Disability-Adjusted Life Year has been developed to

compare the effects of different diseases and injuries

on an equal basis.

• One DALY is one year of ‘healthy life’ lost due to a

disease or injury.

• The more DALYs, the greater the burden.

Other terms you may come across…

• PYLL = Potential years of life lost

• YLD = Years of life lost due to disability

• YLL = Years of life lost due to death

Leading cause of DALYs

Projected burden of (YLL, YLD, DALY) major disease groups

Leading cause of BOD by 2023

• Type 2 diabetes is projected to become the leading

cause of disease burden by 2023.

Why?

• Partly attributable to the expanding problem of

overweight and obesity.

How do we compare?

Australia’s ranking

amongst OECD countries

Australia’s ranking

amongst OECD countries

Mortality = death

• Data on death and its causes are vital measures of a

population’s health.

• Examining trends and patterns in mortality can help to

explain changes and differences in health status,

evaluate health strategies, and guide planning and

policy making.

• Declining mortality has led to large growth in the

number of people in older age groups.

Data standards

• child mortality rate = children aged 1–14 years

• infant mortality rate = children aged less than 1 year

Death rates for young people

Death rates among

young people from

OECD countries

Morbidity = ill health

• Can refer to ill health in an individual or levels of ill

health in a population or group.

• Types of morbidity can be ‘prevalent’ in a specific

population group.

• Cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic kidney

disease often occur together in the general population,

a situation known as comorbidity.

Prevalence

• Prevalence = number of cases of an illness in the

population

• Lets take diabetes for example…

o National surveys suggest that diabetes is now

about 3x as common as it was 20 years ago, with

over 800,000 of today’s Australians having been

diagnosed with the disease.

Incidence

• Incidence = number of new cases of an illness in a

particular time period

• Example: o Between 2000 and 2008 there were over 8,000 new cases of

Type 1 diabetes diagnosed in Australian children, an average

of two new cases every day.

Population groups

Rural & remote Australians

The good news…

• unique and enjoyable lifestyle.

• personal safety, community connection and general

wellbeing are higher in some rural areas.

The not so good news…

• tend to have higher levels of disease risk factors and

illness than those in major cities.

• less access to health services and staff.

• hazards of driving over long road distances.

• lower levels of education, income and employment.

Socio-economic

disadvantaged groups

• Not only do groups with the most disadvantage tend to

have much worse health than the best-off groups,

there is a clear graded effect on the groups in

between.

– Death rates were 70% higher in the most

disadvantage group compared with the best-off

groups.

– The most disadvantaged groups report the highest

levels of many disease and associated risk factors.

Indigenous Australians

• Socioeconomically disadvantaged compared with other

Australians.

• Life expectancy much lower (i.e. they die much younger).

• More likely to experience disability and reduced quality

of life because of ill health.

• Higher levels of risk factors (i.e. smoking, poor nutrition & obesity).

Infant & child mortality…

• Injury and poisoning deaths were 3 times higher than

non-Indigenous 0-4yr olds.

• Respiratory disease deaths were 4 times higher than

non-Indigenous 0-4yr olds.

Young people

The good news…

• Large declines in death rates.

• Declines in asthma hospitalisations.

• Improved survival for cancer, with survival for

melanoma very high.

• Favourable trends in some risk and protective factors,

such as declines in smoking and illicit substance use.

• Most Year 10 and Year 12 students using

contraception.

Young people

The not so good news…

• Rising rates of diabetes.

• Rising rates of sexually transmissible infections-chlamydia.

• High rates of mental disorders.

• Too many, road transport accident deaths for males.

• Too many young people are overweight or obese.

• Not meeting physical activity.

• Not eating enough fruit and vegetables.

• Are victims of alcohol- or drug-related violence.

More information…

Available to download

FREE on website

www.aihw.gov.au

www.aihw.gov.au

education@aihw.gov.au

Cherie McLean 02 6244 1012

This presentation was developed by The AIHW Education Team

and presented at the Home Economics VCE Health and Human Development Student Day Out 2011