New AIHW report on heart, stroke and vascular disease launched on World Heart Day
The article was originally posted on LinkedIn by Miriam Lum On, Cardiovascular, Diabetes & Kidney, Unit Head, AIHW.
To recognise World Heart Day, today my team released a new report, Heart, stroke and vascular disease: Australian facts.
Our report shows that 1.2 million Australian adults had one or more conditions related to heart, stroke or vascular disease in 2017–18.
Progress on cardiovascular health in Australia requires regular monitoring and this significant resource will help health policy makers and researchers continue to monitor and better understand cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the Australian population.
The report provides collated data describing heart, stroke and vascular disease in the Australian population, and focuses on 4 main areas:
- risk factors
- major types and their comorbidities (coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, peripheral arterial disease, rheumatic heart disease and congenital heart disease)
- treatment and management, and
- impact, in terms of burden of disease estimates and health expenditure
Trends, prevalence, hospitalisation and mortality are described for each CVD sub-type, with additional analysis by Indigenous status, remoteness area and socioeconomic group.
Users can explore our interactive data tool for further cardiovascular hospitalisation and mortality data. This provides trends and age-specific rates which we know will be valuable for those wanting greater detail.
The report also provides a summary of key data gaps and opportunities for monitoring heart, stroke and vascular diseases. Two key opportunities are improving capture of person-centred data through data linkage and use of digital health technology.
- AIHW has several CVD focused data linkage projects underway (watch this space!) that bring together information from more than one source and allows reporting on how individuals interact with the health system and health outcomes.
- the goal for World Heart Day this year is ‘harnessing the power of digital health to improve awareness, prevention and management of CVD globally’. It is important during the pandemic that people with heart, stroke and vascular diseases stay connected with the health system through telehealth services. AIHW will be able to explore this in future reports.
Lastly, in partnership with The Heart Foundation, we’ve also included several patient experience stories. Explore ‘Stories from the heart’ here.
I would like to thank my fantastic team, the Cardiovascular, Diabetes and Kidney Unit and all contributors and reviewers, for their efforts on this release.