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What your health and your postcode have in common

Addressing the social determinants of health in line with the recommendations of the WHO Report could drop social welfare payments by $4 billion. Image by Thinkstock.
Addressing the social determinants of health in line with the recommendations of the WHO Report could drop social welfare payments by $4 billion. Image by Thinkstock.

A report into Australia's domestic response to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health report ‘Closing the gap within a generation’ will be presented today in Canberra.

Much of what that report contains, we already know. Around one in three of the 2.2 million Australians who live on incomes under $35,000 a year report poor health compared to just 6.5 per cent of those earning the highest incomes.

According to the Social Determinant of Health Alliance , poor education, low income and geography means people living in poorer suburbs will die up to three years earlier than people living in more affluent areas.

“The evidence-based recommendations from the WHO’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health Report have reaped benefits around the world, but we have yet to see Australian governments commit to their implementation,” explained Martin Laverty, Chair of the Social Determinants of Health Alliance and National Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

One recent Australian study found that by addressing the social determinants of health in line with the recommendations of the WHO Report, half a million Australian could avoid suffering a chronic illness, 170 extra Australians could enter the workforce, generating $8 billion in extra earnings and welfare support payments would drop by $4 billion.

“Parts of Canada are now screening for poverty in doctor’s surgeries as a chronic illness indicator, in the same way that screening for high blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking prevalence regularly occurs in doctor’s surgeries in Australia,” Mr Laverty told News.com.au.

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The impact of stroke across the Australian landscape, its cities and towns has also been mapped by the National Stroke Foundation in The Stroke in Australia: No postcode untouched report.

Tasmania and South Australia are the states with the highest stroke burden per head of population while NSW has five of the top ten stroke survivor hot spots and six of the top ten for number of strokes.

State borders are no barrier with vast tracts of regional Victoria represented in the top quarter of Australian electorates for stroke burden.

“If we could lift the health status of those in the poorest postcodes to the national average we’d have 5.5 million fewer medical visits, 60,000 fewer people would not need to be admitted to hospital and we’d save $273 million a year,” Mr Laverty says.

There would also be 5.3 million fewer prescriptions filled, saving $183 million a year.

Surprisingly, women living in some of Australia's most affluent locations have the highest rates of breast cancer, which is surprising because cancer is generally more common in disadvantaged areas. Canberra residents are at greatest risk, with 129.2 new cases per 100,000 women a year, compared to a norm of about 115, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

The highest rates of type 2 diabetes are in the Northern Territory, where Department of Health and Families data reveals almost 11.8 per cent of the population has type 2 diabetes.

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The real figure could be much higher because many people are unaware that they have the disease. Overall, an average of 6.4 per cent of the Australian adult population has diabetes, according to the International Diabetes Federation.

High rates of obesity, smoking and excessive drinking have placed residents of Mackay, Queensland, at the highest risk of bowel cancer, the nation's most common internal cancer to affect both men and women, according to Queensland Health. Mackay residents are developing the disease at a rate of 76.3 per 100,000 people a year compared to a national average of 63.3.

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