Immunisation rates for Australian children 2014-15

Healthy communities: immunisation rates for children in 2014–15 has been published by the National Health Performance Authority. It shows the percentages of children who were fully immunised at ages 1, 2 and 5 years in Primary Health Networks as well as particular postcodes and reports on our children's immunisation status nationally.

This report provides a detailed summary related to our blog post last month linking to an interactive data site from the NHPA and shows that there are still a number of areas where immunisation rates remain "potentially too low to prevent the spread of diseases".  The North Coast of NSW has one of the lowest rates in Australia. 

Methamphetamine users in Australia 2002-2014

A recent study in the Medical Journal of Australia examined the number of regular and dependent methamphetamine users in Australia. The results of the prevalence study showed that there were an estimated 268,000 regular methamphetamine users and 160,000 dependent users in Australia in 2013-14. Over the years the age group with the highest numbers of users was 25-34.

The authors concluded that increases over the past 12 years had been marked among young adults and that "there is an increasing need for health services to engage with people who have developed problems related to their methamphetamine use."

Louisa Degenhardt, Sarah Larney, Gary Chan, Timothy Dobbins, Megan Weier, Amanda Roxburgh, Wayne Hall, Rebecca McKetin. Estimating the number of regular and dependent methamphetamine users in Australia, 2002–2014.  MJA 204 (4)  7 March 2016.

Cancer risk - interactive body map

Ian Olver from the University of South Australia explains the difference between "relative risk" and "absolute risk" when it comes to cancer in an article published today in The Conversation: It's all relative: how to understand cancer risk.  Absolute risk is the risk of developing a cancer over a certain period of time.  Relative risk is the risk one group of people has of developing a cancer compared to the risk of another group.   

Reading this is a a good precursor to looking at the Interactive body map: what really gives you cancer? also published today in The Conversation.  Here, authors Emil Jevaratnam and Sasha Petrova bring together evidence on proven cancer correlations.  What are the risks of alcohol, red meat, sun exposure, obesity and so on, when it comes to increasing your likelihood of various cancers?

Causes of Death Australia 2014

There were 153,580 deaths registered in Australia in 2014, 5,902 more than the number registered in 2013 (147,678). There were more male deaths (78,341) registered in 2014 than female deaths (75,239).
 The leading causes of death were Ischaemic heart diseases (I20-I25), Dementia, including Alzheimer's disease (F01, F03, G30), Cerebrovascular diseases (including strokes) (I60-I69), Cancer of the trachea, bronchus and lung (C33, C34), and Chronic lower respiratory diseases (J40-J47). These accounted for over one-third of all deaths.
Published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the report is free to download.  


3303.0 - Causes of Death, Australia, 2014

WHO Zika App

The World Health Organization has created a Zika app. The app gathers all of WHO's guidance for agencies and individuals involved in the response to Zika Virus Disease and its suspected complications such as microcephaly, and for health care workers such as doctors, nurses and community health workers.

The app is now available both in Android and iOS versions.

iOS version:
https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/who-zika-app/id1090088404?mt=8

Android version:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.universaldoctor.zika

Chronic failure in primary care

Ineffective management of heart disease, asthma, diabetes and other chronic diseases costs the Australian health system more than $320 million each year in avoidable hospital admissions, according to a new Grattan Institute report.

Chronic failure in primary care finds that our primary care system provides only half the recommended care for many chronic conditions. Only a quarter of the nearly one million Australians diagnosed with type 2 diabetes get the monitoring and treatment recommended for their condition.

Chronic failure in primary care. by Hal Swerissen and Stephen Duckett. February 2016.

Small area Indicators of Wellbeing for Older Australians

The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, at the University of Canberra, has released the index of wellbeing for older Australians. This index shows areas where older people in Australia experience low and high wellbeing across 5 domains. The analysis shows that housing is a large contributor to wellbeing, as well as education. Areas of very low and high wellbeing for older people tend to be in cities rather than regional areas.

The index is intended to be a tool for a range of stakeholders including policy-makers and planners in government, service providers and researchers. It will enable them to identify and monitor the characteristics of the older population within local geographic areas, compare the effectiveness of policies, programs and services across different areas and provide information to assist in the development and targeting of services.

Small area Indicators of Wellbeing for Older Australians (IWOA); February 2016. Authors: Robert Tanton, Yogi Vidyattama and Riyana Miranti.   

Health workforce - updated figures

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has updated its webpages on the Australian health workforce with data from 2014. Summaries are provided for each of the registered health workforce groups which give a good indication of the nature, size, distribution and effectiveness of the health and community services workforce.  There are downloadable summary data tables for each category.

Nurses and midwives make up more than half of the total of over 600,000 registered health professionals in 2014.  Four in ten were aged 50 or older, and 90% of them had a clinical role.  For medical practitioners, 39.4% were women and 3477 domestic students commenced medical undergraduate training in Australia in 2014.

Blood money - paying for pathology services

The Grattan Institute has published a report by Stephen Duckett, Blood Money: Paying for Pathology Services which calls for changes in the way the government pays for pathology testing. 

The report reveals that taxpayers spend over $2.5 billion per year on pathology services via Medicare.  Providers have introduced modern technologies that allow them to run additional tests at low costs but the government pays full price for each test.  Efficiencies should be passed on and patients should be protected from out-of-pocket charges, Duckett asserts.  He also suggests that tendering for services should be part of more commercial purchasing arrangements with pathology providers.  

Dancing and cardiovascular disease

Elvert Barnes CC BY-SA 2.0 

A study just published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by researchers from The University of Sydney and Western Sydney University concluded that moderate-intensity dancing was more strongly associated with a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease mortality than moderate-intensity walking.

The cohort study looked at population surveys of over 48,000 adults over the age of forty in the United Kingdom.  The authors surmised that "The association between dance and cardiovascular disease mortality may be explained by high-intensity bouts during dancing, lifelong adherence, or psychosocial benefits."

An interview with one of the authors, Dafna Merom from WSU, can be found on the ABC website.

Dafna Merom, Ding Ding & Emmanuel Stamataki.  Dancing Participation and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: A Pooled Analysis of 11 Population-Based British Cohorts American Journal of Preventive Medicine [Articles in Press]. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2016.01.004

Med Pix Free Online Medical Image Database

The National Library of Medicine has announced the launch of MedPix®, a free online medical image database. 

The MedPix collection categorizes and classifies the image and patient data for each of several subsets of image database applications (e.g. radiology, pathology, ophthalmology, etc.). The content material is both high-quality and high-yield and includes both common and rare conditions. Most cases have a proven diagnosis (pathology, clinical follow-up).     The URL is https://medpix.nlm.nih.gov/.

Diagnosis of Gout

Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis, and the prevalence has been increasing. In a 2013 study that analyzed data from several national surveys in the US administered from 2002 to 2008, the number of ambulatory care visits attributable to gout was estimated to be 7 million visits annually, with 2 million attributable to acute attacks. (The rate more than doubled from 2002 to 2008.) The total annual ambulatory care costs associated with gout (visits and medications) were estimated at $933 million (in 2009 dollars). Drug expenditures accounted for 61 percent of the total costs.

This recent summary is part of an American Government initiative from the Effective Health Care Program under the guidance of the guidance of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Click here to download: Diagnosis of Gout

Cancer in Adolescents and Young Adults

Wiley Oncology has presented a collection of manuscripts describing a National Cancer Institute workshop entitled Next Steps for Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology: A Scientific Update.

The meeting was held in September 2014 and included discussions from 5 separate working groups focusing on the following topics: Epidemiology, Basic Biology, Clinical Trials, Health Services and Medical Care, and Health-related Quality of Life and Symptoms.

You can read the recommendations on future research priorities in the articles below.

• Next Steps for Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Workshop: An update on progress and recommendations for the future
• Incidence and incidence trends of the most frequent cancers in adolescent and young adult Americans, including nonmalignant/noninvasive tumors
• Comparison of cancer survival trends in the United States of adolescents and young adults with those in children and older adults
• Biologic and clinical characteristics of adolescent and young adult cancers: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, and sarcoma
• Social well-being among adolescents and young adults with cancer: A systematic review

American Cancer Society: Adolescent and Young Adult Series

Childhood exposure to lead and aggressive crime

Reported in news outlets this week was this Australian study testing the hypothesis that in some communities where children were exposed to high levels of lead emissions (from petrol, industrial and mining activities), there was an increase in subsequent aggressive criminal behaviours.

The study, reported as open access in the journal Environmental Health, involved a regression analysis study at suburb, state and national levels, looking at air lead concentrations 15-24 years earlier and current criminal activity.  The authors found a strong positive relationship between childhood lead exposure and subsequent rates of aggressive crime. "Given the overwhelming evidence that there is no safe lower threshold for lead toxicity, remediation programs are essential to mitigate these effects and should be a clear priority for immediate policy change."

Mark Taylor, Miriam Forbes, Brian Opeskin, Nick Parr, Bruce Lanphear. The relationship between atmospheric lead emissions and aggressive crime: an ecological study. Environmental Health 2016 15:23.  DOI: 10.1186/s12940-016-0122-3.

Interactive data for child immunisation rates

Interactive data for child immunisation rates - This interactive tool from the MyHealthyCommunities site from the National Health Performance Authority, allows you to create graphs using immunisation data for children aged 1, 2 and 5 years across Primary Health Network areas, local areas and postcodes accross Australia.  You can compare rates from previous years and compare rates for indigenous children compared to non-indigenous children.