Quick questions on Measuring health status in Australia: HSC PDHPE Core 1

Mortality is the death rate. It is usually expressed as deaths per 100,000 population per year. The ABS Causes of Death dataset is the canonical Australian source. Recent leading causes of death in Australia are ischaemic heart disease, dementia and Alzheimer disease, cerebrovascular disease (stroke), lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Infant mortality is deaths of children under 1 year of age per 1,000 live births. It is an extremely sensitive measure of overall population health, maternal health care quality, and socioeconomic conditions. Australia sits around 3 per 1,000 nationally (AIHW 2024). The Indigenous infant mortality rate is roughly double the non-Indigenous rate, which is itself a priority signal.

Morbidity is illness and disease in a population. Two sub-measures matter:

Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a person born today is expected to live, given current mortality rates. Australian life expectancy is around 83 years, among the highest in the world. The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy is 7-8 years for males and 6-7 years for females (AIHW Closing the Gap report 2024).

A DALY is one lost year of healthy life. It is the sum of:

HALE is life expectancy adjusted for the time spent in poor health. Australian HALE is around 71 years, meaning the average Australian can expect roughly 12 years of life at the end where their health is significantly impaired. HALE is used to argue for prevention spending: extending life by reducing chronic disease in middle age increases HALE proportionally more than late-life treatment does.

Hard data. Every death in Australia is registered. Comparable across years and across countries.

Mortality only captures who dies, not who suffers. A chronic disease like depression has low direct mortality but enormous burden. Mortality misses non-fatal priorities.