Burden of Disease - Background

Local community health planning requires information about the health status of the target population. For the first time in Victoria (and the world), comprehensive information about the health problems of communities and the underlying risk factors contributing to the burden of the disease is available at a local government level. This information includes the most important causes of death as well as estimates of the number of people affected by the 50 most important diseases and injuries. The study introduces a new measure of health status that combines deaths and illness into one indicator - the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY).

Health status is not the same across Victoria. Considerable differences exist between the health status of men and women, people in the city and rural Victoria and between rich and poor areas. Knowing that health is not distributed equally is important to Government in order to take steps to reduce the differences.

For further background information about the Burden of Disease study see the publication below:

Background for users of BoD estimates for LGAs of Victoria

Contents

• Introduction
• Methods
• Uses of the information
• Statistics provided

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Background for users of burden of disease estimates for LGAs of Victoria (331kb, pdf)

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