Australia's health,
visualised
The health of a nation is a tricky thing to measure. People have ups and downs and one person's poor health is another's good health. However, there are some indicators of health that are universal – a long life free of disease, a perceived sense of wellbeing and minimal injury.
The latest biennial report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on the overall health of Australians seeks to measure these vital indicators.
Among other insights, it shows COVID has had a significant effect on Australians' health. The virus was the third leading cause of death in 2022 – the first time in more than 50 years an infectious disease has been in the top five – and may go some way to explaining why we've not seen an increase in life expectancy since the last report.
So, just how healthy are we?
Australia
To help make sense of the numbers, we've shrunk Australia's population down to 100 people.
Each circle is a person in the imaginary 100 Australians. They aren't a real person, but a statistic. Essentially, one circle represents 1% of the population.
We can look at the key areas of Australians' health to visualise where we are doing well and where we can improve.
In 2022, 85% of Australians aged 15 and over reported their health as good or very good.
However, while nearly nine out of ten Australians perceived their health as good, in 2022, 61% of people were living with a chronic condition, and 38% with two or more chronic conditions.
The five most common were...
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%)
For First Nations people the five most common chronic conditions in
2018–19 were
eye and sight problems (38%), followed by
asthma (16%),
ear or hearing problems (14%),
back problems (13%)
and
arthritis (10%).
In 2017–19, approximately 35% of the health disparity between First
Nations and non-Indigenous Australians was attributed to differences
in social determinants of health (such as education and employment).
In 2022, about 45% of children aged 0–14 had at least one chronic condition. The most common was hay fever (13%), followed by asthma (8.2%).
In 2020–22, an estimated 8.5 million Australians aged 16–85 had experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life (43% of the population).
The rate of mental illness among females aged 16–24 was 46%, the highest among females and higher than among males of any age group.
This compares to 30% in 2007.
What about the things that make us sick or healthy?
One way to understand the impact of diseases and injuries on a
population is to assess the burden of disease, or the years of
healthy life lost due to ill health.
In 2018, more than
one-third of disease burden was potentially preventable – that is,
it could have been prevented had Australians reduced or avoided
exposure to certain risk factors.
The risk factor that causes the most burden of disease is tobacco use (8.6% of total burden).
Rates of tobacco smoking continue to decline, from two in five
adults in 2001 to less than one in ten in 2022–23.
However, there are more people vaping. Among people 14 and over 3.5%
were vaping daily. Among young people 18–24 that
figure almost triples to 9.3%.
The federal government has just introduced restrictions on vaping products making them only available from pharmacies, and with plain packaging. This should help control what has quickly become a major public health concern.
The risk factor causing the next greatest burden of disease is
overweight and obesity. In 2022,
65% of adults were overweight or obese. This is a drop from the previous report, which found 67% were
overweight or obese in 2017, so we are doing something right!
Of that 65%,
34% are overweight, and
32% are obese.
The percentage of 5-17 year olds who were overweight or obese increased from 25% in 2017-18 to 28% in 2022.
Regular physical activity is important, yet 27% of people aged 18–64 did not reach the minimum recommendation of 150 minutes of physical activity per week.
However, since the last report all ages have become more physically active and there are more people meeting the minimum recommendation – go us!
In more good news, our risky alcohol use (ten or more standard
drinks a week) has declined. Some 31% of people over 14 years
consume a harmful amount of alcohol, down from 39% in 2004.
Alcohol is the fifth largest risk factor to the burden
of disease, so any movement there is good news.
However, there are also external factors that impact our health. The environment, our socioeconomic status and family violence all play a role.
According to a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2021–22 about 8 million Australians, or 41% of the adult population, reported having experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15. Of that, 3.8 million (20%) experienced sexual and/or physical violence in a family or domestic setting.
This is a health concern that disproportionately affects women. One in six women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by a current or previous partner.
Life expectancy and causes of death
A good overall measure of population health is the average life expectancy at birth. For the first time this century, life expectancy has decreased since the previous report. Males can expect to live to 81.2 years and females to 85.3 years, a drop of 0.1 years each. This flattening out is unusual as life expectancy has been steadily increasing for the past 30 years.
The likely reason is the excess deaths observed in 2022 caused by COVID. For the first time in more than 50 years, an infectious disease was in the top five leading causes of death. These are now (1) coronary heart disease; (2) dementia; (3) COVID-19; (4) strokes; (5) lung cancer.
Since the pandemic began, more than 22,000 people in Australia have died from or with COVID, with COVID the main cause for 79% of them. In 2022–23, there were 182,780 hospitalisations due to COVID. As of March 2024, Australia has recorded nearly 12 million confirmed or probable COVID cases, with 95% of these cases reported in 2022.
Traffic accidents were the top cause of death for children aged 1–14. Suicide was most common among people aged 15–44, while chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer were common among those aged 45 and older. Dementia was the leading cause of death for those aged 85 and above.
In 2018, people in remote areas saw twice as many years lost to premature death than those in major cities.
Overall, while there have been improvements since the last report, such as rates of obesity, there are still areas that have not improved, or have even become worse, such as our mental health.