Measurement of health status

1. Measurement of health status

2. Measuring health status • What is meant by “health status”? • There are many ways to measure the health status of Australians, they are: • Life expectancy • Mortality and morbidity • Trends • Incidence and prevalence • Burden of disease

3. Life expectancy • Life expectancy: The average number of years of life remaining to a person at any specified age • Life expectancy at birth: the average number of years newborns can be expected to live if existing death patterns continue during their lifespan • YouTube - How to Live to 101 1 of 5 - Insights into Longer & Healthier Lives - BBC documentary

4. Australia’s life expectancy worksheet • Read the worksheet given and answer the following questions: • Life expectancy has increased in Australia over the last 100 years, why do you think this is so? • Do you think they are spending these extra years in good health or poor health? • Why do you think females live longer than males? • Can you think of any reasons why the top countries in the graph do have the highest lifespan?

5. Mortality • Mortality refers to death and is an important measure of health status • The study of mortality looks at: • how many people die • what causes people to die • the average age at which people die Task: Write 5 questions that the text would answer from the worksheet “Mortality”, then give them to somebody you’re not sitting next to and they will answer those questions.

6. Morbidity • Morbidity means ill health and can refer to an individual or to a population. It relates to the rate at which a particular disease or illness occurs. • Factors affecting morbidity include illness, disease, disability and injury

7. trends • The term ‘trend’ is often used when discussing the measure of health status • Trends refer to tendencies or directions such as increases or decreases, improvements, reductions and other changes over time in the development of disease patterns and the health of a population

8. Incidence and prevalence • Incidence: The number or rate of new cases of a particular condition during a specific time • Prevalence: The number or proportion of cases of a particular disease or condition present in a population at a given time

9. Burden of disease • The burden of disease is the effect of a condition or disease on health through: • years lost from premature death • years spent in poor health • Conditions that have the greatest affect on health are said to have the greatest burden of disease

10. task • Read the worksheet on “Burden of disease” and discuss as a class. • You will be given a disease to focus on in pairs and identify some of the ways the community can address the problem by filling in the table below:

11. disability adjusted life years (DALY) • A measure called the DALY, which stands for disability adjusted life years is used to measure burden of disease • One DALY = one year of healthy life lost due to a disease or injury • DALY not only measures years of life lost (YLL) but also years of life spent living with an illness or disability (YLD) • DALY = YLL + YLD