1. The health status of Australian Youth

2. Health status
Health status refers to the level of health of an individual, group or population
Severe Neutral Optimal health
As already mentioned, health is a dynamic state — it is continually changing. Usually these changes in health status are fairly minor; for example, developing a cold may slightly affect physical, social and mental health for a short period of time.

3. Health status How healthy are you?
Can you think of factors that affect your health? Are you in control of them?

4. Why do we measure the health status of the population?
It allows judgments to be made about the health of individuals, groups or populations. With this information, government and non-government organisations can take action to improve health in specific areas.
It allows trends to be identified in health status over time.
Australia is one of the healthiest countries in the world and Australia’s youth (those aged 12–18) are among the healthiest individuals in the country.

5. How do we measure health status?
There are a number of ways of measuring health status and these measures are collectively known as health indicators. Can you name any health indicators?

6. Life Expectancy
Life expectancy is one of the most common methods used to measure health status. It gives an indication of how long a person can expect to live if the current death rates stay the same.
Male
Female
Birth
55.2
79.7
58.8
84.2
What factors have increased our life expectancy?

7. Your task www.worldlifeexpectancy.com Country Male Life Expectancy
Research the current Life Expectancy of people living living in different countries.
Write a short paragraph outlining some factors which may be contributing to these changes in life expectancy.
Country
Male Life Expectancy
Female Life Expectancy
2 x Factors influencing the countries Life Expectancy

8. Can you explain the trend occurring?

9. Can you explain the trend occurring?

10. Mortality The deaths in a population
Mortality rate is therefore an indication of how many deaths occurred in a population in a given period of time for a specific cause/all causes.
Refer to figure 2.15 and figure 2.16 ~ Can you identify factors that are contributing to these trends?

11. Years of life lost (YLL)
Years of life lost (YLL) due to premature death is another way of measuring and comparing mortality.
If a person dies from a given condition 30 years before the predicted life expectancy for their age, than they have contributed 30 YLLs to that particular cause of death.
Complete questions 2-6, 8-11 on page 45 of the textbook

12. Morbidity
The rate at which a particular disease or illness occurs within a population.
There are two ways of considering morbidity
The number of people reporting a condition. Often represented as a percentage of a population, or the incidence and prevalence rates.
Years lost due to disability (YLD’s)

13. Incidence & Prevalence - Two measures used to present morbidity data
Incidence ~ The number or rate of new cases of a particular condition during a specific time.
- Incidence data is useful for identifying which conditions are increasing in diagnosis and which ones are decreasing.
Prevalence ~ The number of cases of a condition at a given time

14. Burden of Disease
Is a measure that combines mortality data with morbidity data, specifically it measures the gap between current health status and an ideal situation where everyone lives to an old age free of disease and disability.
Burden of disease is measured in a unit called a DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Year).
DALY = YLL + YLD

15. Burden of Disease. DALYs
Disability adjusted life years (DALYs) are a measure of the years of healthy life lost due to premature death, illness or injury.
One DALY is a lost year of ‘healthy’ life.
DALY= YLL + YLD
Years of life lost due premature mortality.
Years of healthy life lost due to disability

17. Reading data
The following graph shows the proportion of youth rating their family’s ability to get along as excellent, very good, fair or poor. This graph is referring to family cohesion.
Family cohesion is an example of Social environment determinant.

18. The following graph shows the mortality rate for those aged 5-19 between 1970 and 2008: