How healthy are Australians in 2024?
Posted by Nicholas Dang onThe Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recently released Australia’s health 2024 – the 19th biennial report on the health of Australians.
Here are some findings that may interest you…
The FIVE leading causes of death in 2022:
- Coronary heart disease
- Dementia
- COVID-19
- Cerebrovascular disease
- Lung cancer.
We have made improvements for some health risk factors, while rates for others have grown:
- A greater proportion of adults are living with overweight or obesity: 55% (1995) to 66% (2022).
- 31% of people aged 14 and over consumed alcohol in ways that put their health at risk in 2022-23 – down from 39% in 2004.*
- Rates of daily tobacco smoking continue to decline (12.2% in 2016 to 8.3% in 2022-23), but the proportion of people aged 14 and over using e-cigarettes daily has risen (0.5% in 2016 to 3.5% in 2022-23).
The FIVE most common long-term health conditions in 2022:
- Anxiety (4.8 million people, 18.9%)
- Back problems (4.0 million people, 15.7%)
- Depression (3.2 million people, 12.4%)
- Asthma (2.8 million people, 10.8%)
- Deafness or hearing loss (2.4 million people, 9.6%).
Over ⅓ of disease burden was potentially preventable in 2018 – that is, it could have been prevented had Australians reduced or avoided exposure to certain risk factors.†
The FIVE risk factors that caused the most disease burden in 2018:
- Tobacco use (8.6% of total burden)
- Overweight and obesity (8.4%)
- Dietary risks (5.4%)
- High blood pressure (5.1%)
- Alcohol use (4.5%).
* Consuming more than 10 standard drinks per week or more than 4 in a single day is likely to increase the risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury.
† Burden of disease is a way of measuring the impact of diseases and injuries on a population. It combines the years of healthy life lost due to living with ill health (non-fatal burden) with the years of life lost due to dying prematurely (fatal burden).
What do you think about these numbers?
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References
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) Australia’s health 2024: in brief, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed 04 September 2024.
- Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Health_Illustrated_Text.png
- Tags: diet, drinking, health, physical activity, smoking
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