Abstract
Recent chronic disease prevention frameworks at both the
national and state level in Australia have emphasised a
transition from vertical, single-issue public health efforts to a
more coordinated approach that targets clustered risk factors
for chronic disease. An integrated approach to reducing
modifiable risk factors requires the development of suitable
performance measures that can be used to monitor the progress
and effectiveness of combined efforts as well as to identify
trends in the risk of population subgroups to assess progress
in addressing health inequalities.
NSW Health recently proposed the concept of a ‘Dashboard
of Indicators’ to monitor health system performance and
prevention activities. This study describes different methods
of calculating an indicator of chronic disease risk using health
behaviour measures from the NSW Adult Health Survey 2002,
and explores the use of a summary indicator for identifying
subgroups within the population at high risk of developing
chronic disease.
