The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare- AIHW has gone on to release a report that presents numerous results when it comes to various possibilities to lessen the burden of overweight, which includes obesity as well as physical inactivity. The AIHW goes on to report that enhancing Australia’s population’s exposure when it comes to lifestyle risk elements such as physical inactivity and overweight issues reduces the disease risk and burden that are attributable to the risk factors.
If, in this case, the exposure to being overweight and physical inactivity gets reduced, the loss of thousands of years of healthy life can be avoided by 2030, as per the data.
The report goes on to present inferences from various scenarios when it comes to reduced overweight and physical inactivity exposure in the case of tackling the disease burden by 2030. Apparently, the year 2030 has been chosen as it goes on to align with the National Preventive Health Strategy for 2021–2030 that further seeks to obtain enhanced health outcomes over the decade and happens to be complimentary to the National Obesity Strategy from 2022 to 2032.
It is well to be noted that every year in Australia, millions of healthy life years are lost due to injury, premature deaths, and illnesses in the population. This loss happens to be called the burden of the disease.
Apparently, in 2018, over one-third of the disease burden could have been prevented by lessening exposure to risk elements such as overweight, tobacco usage, and physical inactivity. These, plus the other lifestyle-related risk factors, happen to be major contributors when it comes to chronic conditions like dementia, coronary heart diseases, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.
The present AIHW analysis looks at two risk factors when it comes to this disease, namely, overweight and physical inactivity, in order to gauge what could happen if the Australians reduced their BMI or were, as a matter of fact, more active between 2018 and 2030.
It is well to be noted that in 2018, physical inactivity and overweight comprised 8.7% of the total burden in the country, a leading risk issue for Australia’s disease burden, which was more than tobacco smoking (8.6%).
The analysis has gone on to evaluate the following scenarios-
- Stable- Where in 2030, the overweight and physical inactivity across the population stays at 2018 levels.
- Target- People at elevated risks associated with disease in 2018 reduces their BMIs or show an increase in their physical activity level and maintain it to 2030.
- Trend- Where the present trends when it comes to exposure were extended till 2030.
