Study to follow ‘45 and up’

More than 250,000 men and women aged 45 years and over across New South Wales will have their health studied over the coming decades to help better understand how to “live well” in mid to later life.

Researchers claim studying large numbers of people over a long period of time can provide many answers to questions that are critical to the nation’s health.

Information on the health of 45 and Up Study participants is collected via a baseline questionnaire that is mailed to people in the target age range who are selected at random from the Medicare Australia enrolment database.

From now until about the end of 2014, the 45 and Up Study is asking participants to complete the first of its followup questionnaires.

Participants will provide self reported information about their background, lifestyle, health and health service use at baseline and then every five years.

Questionnaire information includes: demographic data, including age, education, ethnicity, type of housing; lifestyle and habits, including physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption; current medications, history of disease and surgical procedures; functional capacity (MOS-PF) and psychological distress (Kessler-10); social support (Duke sub-scale), employment status, paid and unpaid work and income.

Information to be gathered through data linkage will include: the use of health and aged care services, and details of this care (including general practitioner services, emergency department visits, hospitalisations, medications, communitybased aged care and residential aged care); deaths, with underlying cause; and certain incident morbidities, ie myocardial infarction, fractures, cancer and diabetes etc.

When funds become available, participants will also be asked to provide extra information to the study, as well as physical measures (ie height and weight) and samples (ie blood samples, buccal smears etc), to allow the study a more in depth look at the factors affecting health.

The 45 and Up Study research team claim the findings will help to see which things have changed for a quarter of a million Australians over time, and which have stayed the same.

“Second, new information can help ‘join the dots’ on ageing. For example, the follow up questionnaire contains new questions on pain and how it interferes with life; questions on how active or inactive people are; their use of transport; and blood donation.

“This will help us gain important new insights into how people’s lifestyle affects their physical and mental health,” the researchers say.

Read more about the 45 and Up Study.