Your health - biennial report

Welcome to Your health: Report of the Chief Health Officer, Victoria, 2020 and 2021.

This is the 9th report published by the Chief Health Officer in Victoria, and covers the years of 2020 and 2021.

This edition of Your health report highlights the profound public health challenges to Victoria, Australia resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The world had not experienced such an extensive communicable disease outbreak since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1920. COVID-19 would go on to challenge public health significantly throughout 2020, 2021 and the following years. The public health response of the Victorian Department of Health and the broader Victorian Government was unprecedented. Health services, businesses, education settings, community organisations and others were required to implement profound changes to the ways in which they operated. It was a profoundly difficult time for all Victorians.

The report also considers other public health challenges including the ongoing impacts on public health of climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and mosquito-borne disease, demonstrating the importance of health authorities and communities being prepared for multiple, concurrent public health challenges.

Finally, the report provides information on mental health, maternal and child health, communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases including cancer, food and water safety, oral health and other health and wellbeing matters.

Welcome to Your health: Report of the Chief Health Officer, Victoria, 2019.

This is the eighth report published by the Chief Health Officer of Victoria, and covers the year of 2019.

This edition of Your health report highlights that global climate change is increasingly impacting Victoria’s health.

In 2019-20, the impact of the Eastern Victorian bushfires was significant. Five lives were lost, thousands displaced, and numerous communities temporarily isolated. In addition to devastating bushfires, climate change is also contributing to more extreme heat days, and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events. Direct health impacts of such events are outlined throughout the report, and these effects will increase unless urgent, sustained action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At a broader level, this Your Health report, presents an overview of population profile, highlights health inequalities across Victorian populations and measures Victoria’s overall burden of disease. The report also outlines how the health of Victorians is shaped by a complex interaction between, health behaviours, genetic inheritance, access to quality healthcare and the social determinants of health.

Finally, the report reflects on a series of chapters that consider environmental health, healthy living, maternal and infant health, child health, communicable disease, non-communicable disease, mental health, injury prevention and oral health.

This is the seventh biennial report published by the Chief Health Officer of Victoria, and the first since I commenced in this role in 2019.

This report, a requirement of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, provides a snapshot of the health of Victorians in 2018. It presents information from several sources and highlights key topics to paint a broad picture of the health of Victorians. The articles in each section are not an exhaustive examination of each topic; rather they present an overview of each topic with links to other reports if readers would like a more detailed understanding of the topic.

For the first time, this report is presented in an online format. This allows us to link to other reports and to provide digital content. In some cases, this digital content is updated daily, which means you can obtain up-to-date and specific data.

Read the Your health: Report of the Chief Health Officer, Victoria, 2018

Keeping Victorians as well as they can be is important for individuals, families and the community. It is also crucial for a healthy, productive workforce and a strong economy.

Your health: Report of the Chief Health Officer, Victoria, 2016 provides an overview of the health and wellbeing of Victorians, as well as the determinants of health in Victoria. It identifies the health issues facing Victorians, and is a starting point in considering policy and government investments for improving people's health. It provides a strong basis for a concerted effort to reduce health inequalities and improve the health status of Victorians by tackling the enormous burden of, and the steady increase in, preventable diseases.

This report is the sixth report by Victoria's Chief Health Officer and covers the two-year period to June 2016.

The report is spilt into two parts. Part 1 gives an overview of Victoria's health, drawing on the particular challenges that health inequalities pose within our community. The 2014 report was the first to include a focus chapter and this report builds on this concept with a focus chapter reflecting key components of health inequalities and how they affect Victorians.

Part 2 uses the National Health Performance Framework to address selected health indicators. The indicators selected are based on readily available data that have been measured over time. Since the data is collated from a variety of sources, reporting periods differ for the various indicators.

Determinants of health

The determinants of health impact health outcomes at an individual and population level. This report begins by first considering upstream factors that contribute to health outcomes such as the environment and social factors before narrowing down to reflect on health behaviours and constitutional factors.

Health status

This report details the overall wellbeing of Victorians, the prevalence of health conditions (grouped into non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases and oral health) and mortality data as indicators for health.

Health system interventions

Finally, the report reflects on a series of chapters that consider health service utilisation. Immunisation, screening and biomedical checks are all reported on.

This report meets the requirements of s. 21(c) of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008.

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Overview

This is the fourth publication in a series of biennial reports that provide a comprehensive picture of the health and wellbeing of Victorians. It has been developed to meet the requirements of s. 21(c) of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 and covers the period to June 2012.

The information in this report is a valuable overview of the health issues that Victoria faces. It is an ideal starting point on which to build policy and government investments for improving the health of the Victorian population. This report provides a strong basis for a concerted public health effort to reduce health inequalities and further improve the health status of Victorians by tackling the burden of preventable diseases.

Overall, the report shows that Victorians generally enjoy good health compared with other Australians; however, it also reveals health issues and differentials in health outcomes between areas and population groups.

Your health: The Chief Health Officer’s report 2012 has been structured using the National health performance framework 2009 and provides an overview of the health of Victorians, in particular their health status and the factors that determine their health.

Health status

This domain covers the four dimensions of health status, bringing together a range of indicators that summarise the impact of disease and injury on the wellbeing of Victorians. The indicators provide an overall measure of population health, which may be either wholly or partially attributable to health service intervention:

1. Wellbeing: Includes measures of physical, mental and social wellbeing.
2. Health conditions: Measured through the prevalence of disease, disorder, injury or trauma or other health-related state.
3. Human function: Measures alterations to body structure or function (impairment), activity limitations and restrictions in participation.
4. Deaths: Includes mortality rates and life expectancy measures.

Determinants of health

The determinants of health impact at the individual or population level. They are key to the prevention of disease and injury and help explain and predict trends and inequalities in health status. They can be behavioural, biomedical, socioeconomic or environmental. Determinants of health can impact late in the causal pathway (such as tobacco smoking) or further upstream via a number of intermediaries (such as socioeconomic status and environmental factors). This domain organises indicators under four dimensions:

1. Health behaviours: Includes attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and behaviours such as patterns of eating, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption.
2. Biomedical factors: Incorporates genetic-related susceptibility to disease and other factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and body weight.
3. Community and socioeconomic: Measures community factors such as social capital, support services and socioeconomic factors such as housing, education, employment and income.
4. Environmental factors: Includes physical, chemical and biological factors such as air, water, food and soil quality.

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Your Health: A report on the health of Victorians 2005 is the first publication of a biannual series of reports issued by the Office of the Chief Health Officer.

The release of this first report had two important functions:

• to provide a single access point for a wide range of the most significant and up-to-date health-related data available in Victoria about the health of Victorians
• to coincide with a number of key government policies aimed at delivering better health and wellbeing outcomes for all Victorians.
• Section 1: General health status
• Section 2: Health-related behaviours
• Section 3: Health priority areas
• Section 4: Environmental and social health
• Section 5: Health inequalities.

Five sections

This report has five sections:

General health status

Section 1 includes health status and health outcomes indicators on burden of disease, life expectancy at birth, avoidable mortality, ambulatory care sensitive conditions, and self-reported health.

Health-related behaviours

Section 2 presents information on risk factors and health-related behaviours for the selected public health indicators of smoking, nutrition, alcohol and physical inactivity among adults.

Health priority areas

Section 3 contains information on national health priority areas, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, asthma, injury and poisoning, mental health, and selected musculoskeletal conditions. Mothers’ and children’s health and key communicable diseases indicators are also presented.

Environmental and social health

Section 4 provides indicators of air quality developed with the Environment Protection Authority, and Legionella indicators developed with the environmental health program area (Public Health) of the Department of Health & Human Services. Social and community indicators such as volunteering and trust are based on the Victorian Population Health Survey 2004, while indicators on weekly earnings, employment, crime rate, and housing are based on the ABS data.

Health inequalities

Section 5 presents indicators on key issues of Aboriginal health, using the ABS and hospital separations data in Victoria. Health-related behaviours and health outcomes are stratified by quintiles of Index of Relative Socioeconomic Disadvantage obtained by the ABS to identify differentials in the health of Victorians by socioeconomic factors. Differentials in rural health are described, using the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia.