Health Risk Factors

 Health risk factors are attributes, characteristics or exposures that increase the likelihood of an individual developing a disease or health disorder. Behavioural risk factors are people who individuals have the foremost ability to switch. Biomedical risk factors are bodily states that are often influenced by behavioural risk factors. To ensure our health system is aligned to our country’s health challenges, policy makers must be able to compare the effects of different conditions that cause ill-health and premature death. Burden of disease analysis considers both the non-fatal burden (impact of ill-health) and fatal burden (impact of premature death) of a comprehensive list of diseases and injuries, and quantifies the contribution of varied risk factors to the entire burden also on individual diseases and injuries. In addition, an analysis of the joint effect of all dietary risks suggested that they accounted for around 7.0% of disease burden. There were 29 risk factors included in this study. All these risk factors combined (the joint effect) contributes greatly to the burden for endocrine disorders, cardiovascular diseases, injuries, kidney and urinary disease and cancer. The joint effect of all the danger factors included during this study accounted for 31% of the entire burden of disease and injury in Australia in 2011. This illustrates the potential for health gain through disease and injury prevention by reducing exposure to those risk factors.