Risk factors for chronic disease in young, midlife and older adults: the PATH Through Life study

The National Preventative Health Taskforce (2010) has stressed the importance of building and strengthening an evidence base for surveillance of chronic disease risk factors. This study provides recent prevalence statistics of key health determinants and their rates of cooccurrence in a large Australian cohort study. Data were analysed from the most recent collection of the PATH Through Life project (wave 3, 2007-10, n=5,633). Health risk factors were measured by self-report survey items with the exception of hypertension which was measured manually at rest and averaged over two measurements (>140/90 mmHg). Long-term harmful alcohol use was based on the National Health and Medical Research Council 2009 guidelines of more than 14 standard drinks per week. Further details of methods, survey design, procedure, sampling frame, attrition, comparisons to census data and descriptive statistics are provided elsewhere.