ABS launches Australian health survey
In the next few days, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will commence the first Australian Health Survey (AHS), the biggest health survey ever conducted in Australia.
The survey will involve about 50,000 randomly sampled adults and children from across Australia.
The AHS builds on previous health surveys allowing comparisons of health information over time such as obesity, smoking, health conditions and how we manage our health. The AHS will collect new information about what we eat and drink, how active we are and will seek voluntary participation in providing blood and urine samples for biomedical measurement.
These new biomedical measures will reveal insights into heart and kidney disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions by examining health risk factors such as cholesterol, glucose and sodium levels.
The survey will be able to compare these biomedical risk factors with aspects of our lifestyle for those that are healthy and those who are not.
The first wave of the Australian Health Survey will be conducted over 2011-12 with summary results available in late 2012.
Further information and detailed questions and answers are available on the ABS website at www.abs.gov.au/australianhealthsurvey
Separately, Macquarie University’s Department of Chiropractic Workforce Research team is conducting a survey across Australia to ascertain how the public is currently being served by chiropractic, what kind of services are being used and what, if any alterations are needed in order to better meet the needs of the community.
They are asking the public to assist by filling out an online survey and expressing their views on the chiropractic services available in their local area.
The results of the study will not only inform the industry as a whole regarding the public’s attitudes and expectations about chiropractic, but will also help to add to the knowledge base on current trends in chiropractic supply and demand.
While millions of Australians make use of chiropractic services each year, gauging people’s attitudes and expectations about chiropractic in Australia has not been undertaken before on such a large scale other than a small pilot study conducted previously in NSW.
