HEALTH BEHAVIOURS

There are specific state-wide health promotion priorities that recognise the key health behaviours that need addressing for the future wellbeing of our broader community. These priorities have been identified as the major focal points to address the current and future health of the Victorian population. They include physical activity, nutrition, mental health, sexual and reproductive health, safe environments and tobacco and alcohol use.

Chronic disease risk factors

The health behaviours relate to chronic disease factors, which in turn impact life expectancy and quality. The Public Health Information Development Unit (PHIDU) at the University of Adelaide, using data from the 2004-05 National Health Survey, has developed estimates at the Statistical Local Area (SLA) level for a variety of chronic disease risk factors. The estimates were generally not available for different age groups and sometimes were not available to be broken down by sex. Data from the PHIDU, in this section, is presented with sex breakdown whenever this was available. Where it was not available data sets are marked with #.