Introduction:
The purpose of the assignment is to provide a brief review on the 2016 Australia’s Health Tracker report presented by the Australian Health Policy Collaboration. In this regards the report will outline one of the risk factors, prevalence of the risk factor, burden of disease for the particular health area in Australia and health policies of Australian government for the particular risk factor. The chosen risk factor for this assignment is adults who are overweight or obese.
Risk factor:
According to the health statistics of WHO, it has been found that Australia has ranked third in the prevalence of obesity in adults. It has been found that obesity has the highest impact on people aged between 60-75 years old (who.int, 2018). The Australian government has targeted to reduce the prevalence to 61.1% within 2025. The report has shown that the trend is in the wrong direction and progress is poor against the target (Vu.edu.au, 2018). Risk of severe disease such as cardiovascular attack, diabetes, respiratory disorders and cancer is high for the obese people (Müller-Riemenschneider et al., 2013). Thus, it is important to provide adequate focus to the matter to address the risk factor of obesity in Australia to improve the health status.
Prevalence:
The prevalence of obesity is higher in case of Indigenous people as compare to non-indigenous people. The statistics provided by the 2016 Australia’s Health Tracker report has shown that the prevalence of obesity in adults is 63.4% for non-indigenous people whereas the prevalence is higher that is 71.4% for indigenous people (Vu.edu.au, 2018). Research has indicated lack of adequate information regarding the proper diet, nutrition and health risk as the main cause of such disparity in the status of health of indigenous and non-indigenous people (Anderson et al., 2016). Thus, it is required to introduce effective strategies in order to mitigate the issue of obesity and reduce the health inequality in the Australian population.
Burden of disease:
Burden of disease in a population can be understand with the help of the metrics known as Disability-adjusted life year or DALY. One DALY is considered as the one lost year of healthy life. It is calculated as the sum of Years of life lost (YLL) and Years lost due to disability (YLD). Increasing obesity has led to the increasing burden of disease. As mentioned before, risk of chronic disease even death is higher in case of obese people. In Australia it has been found that due to cardiovascular risk 507231 years of life lost has occurred (Who.int, 2018). Thus, it is clear that disease burden of chronic disease like cardiovascular risk is high in Australia due to high obesity rate.
Government health strategies:
In order to reduce the prevalence of obesity in adults the Australian government has introduced some strategies. For example, the Australian government has introduced National preventive health task force in order to develop effective strategies to resolve the issue of obesity and other health issues related to it. The Australian National Preventative Health Agency has been developed in 2011 to cope up with the health issue. In addition the government of New South Wales has announced weight loss surgery for morbidly weight patients (health.gov.au, 2018). Such steps are appreciable, however more focus needs to be provided to achieve expected outcome.
References:
Anderson, I., Robson, B., Connolly, M., Al-Yaman, F., Bjertness, E., King, A., ... & Pesantes, M. A. (2016). Indigenous and tribal peoples' health (The Lancet–Lowitja Institute Global Collaboration): a population study. The Lancet, 388(10040), 131-157.
health.gov.au (2018). Department of Health | Health Systems Policy Division. Retrieved from https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/health-systems-policy-division
Müller-Riemenschneider, F., Pereira, G., Villanueva, K., Christian, H., Knuiman, M., Giles-Corti, B., & Bull, F. C. (2013). Neighborhood walkability and cardiometabolic risk factors in Australian adults: an observational study. BMC public health, 13(1), 755.
Vu.edu.au (2018). Retrieved from https://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/files/AHPC/pdfs/australias-health-tracker.pdf
who.int (2018). WHO | Metrics: Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY). Retrieved from https://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/metrics_daly/en/
who.int (2018). World Health Statistics 2017: Monitoring health for the SDGs. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/2017/en/
