HHD Questions Thread 2014

[yearningforsimplicity]

Does HALE refer to as the number of years lived without reduced functioning (including mobility and the operation of body systems) due to ill health.    Or the number of years in full health ?

This is the VCAA definition of HALE:
A measure of burden of disease based on life expectancy at birth, but including an adjustment for time spent in poor health. It is the number of years in full health that a person can expect to live, based on current rates of ill health and mortality.

Basically the HALE tells us how many full 'HEALTHY' years a person can live (in some textbooks I've even seen it being referred to as the 'Healthy Life Expectancy').

The HALE is a more comprehensive indicator of health status then Life expectancy alone. This is because when I say that (just as an example) "Anna may live to be 84 years old" I'm only telling you the total number of years she'll live, based on life expectancy rates at the time she was born. But who knows how many chronic diseases Anna might've already had or develop throughout her life? Will she really live all those expected 84 years in full health??

Basically life expectancy tells us the QUANTITY aspect of how long a person lives. But HALE tells us the QUALITY aspect of how long a person lives. So let's say Anna can be expected to live to be 84 years old. But at age 50 she develops severe and chronic osteoarthritis which causes her significant ill health and disability up to the time of her death. So in this sense, Anna had lived 50 years of life in Full health before developing osteoarthritis which causes her ill health for the next 34 years (i.e. her HALE or years spent in FULL HEALTH is 50 years). Because Quality > Quantity, HALE is a more comprehensive indicator of health status and it gives us a better picture of a person's actual health status

[Only Cheating Yourself]

This is the VCAA definition of HALE:
A measure of burden of disease based on life expectancy at birth, but including an adjustment for time spent in poor health. It is the number of years in full health that a person can expect to live, based on current rates of ill health and mortality.

Basically the HALE tells us how many full 'HEALTHY' years a person can live (in some textbooks I've even seen it being referred to as the 'Healthy Life Expectancy').

The HALE is a more comprehensive indicator of health status then Life expectancy alone. This is because when I say that (just as an example) "Anna may live to be 84 years old" I'm only telling you the total number of years she'll live, based on life expectancy rates at the time she was born. But who knows how many chronic diseases Anna might've already had or develop throughout her life? Will she really live all those expected 84 years in full health??

Basically life expectancy tells us the QUANTITY aspect of how long a person lives. But HALE tells us the QUALITY aspect of how long a person lives. So let's say Anna can be expected to live to be 84 years old. But at age 50 she develops severe and chronic osteoarthritis which causes her significant ill health and disability up to the time of her death. So in this sense, Anna had lived 50 years of life in Full health before developing osteoarthritis which causes her ill health for the next 34 years (i.e. her HALE or years spent in FULL HEALTH is 50 years). Because Quality > Quantity, HALE is a more comprehensive indicator of health status and it gives us a better picture of a person's actual health status

Thanks for the response i knew that its just that book defined it as something different. 

Also i know incidence and prevalence is a measure of morbidity, however is it only morbidity?  So can we use incidence which is a rate to calculate the diseases/conditions that have increased significantly over a 12 month period which have led to death?

[Snorlax]

(a)  Which dimension of health is generally the focus of health statistics?
So I'm assuming its physical health, but not sure of a reason..
(b) Why would this be the case?

Thanks

[yearningforsimplicity]

(a)  Which dimension of health is generally the focus of health statistics?
So I'm assuming its physical health, but not sure of a reason..
(b) Why would this be the case?

Thanks

a) All dimensions of health are in one way or the other represented in health statistics, and Australia does have reliable data/statistics relating to physical, mental and social health problems/disorders. I can understand why you'd think physical dimension of health would be more significantly represented in the health stats. That's probably because for the physical dimension of health, data would be somewhat "easier" to collect I guess! That's because diagnosis of mental disorders, mental health conditions and social health conditions are slightly more difficult to diagnose, as they are more subjective and most people would brush off something like depression and not really go and seek consultation or treatment for it - many mental disorders go undiagnosed each year due to this reason. There is also a sense of humiliation even today concerning some mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia) which might stop patients from actually seeking treatment or reporting their disorder. Whereas often with physical health conditions (e.g. hypertension, arthritis, cancers) most of these are detected in one way or the other (e.g. through a person's blood-test). In that sense, the patient can't really "mask" the physical health problem. Also, physical ailments (which foreshadow physical disease) tend to cause physical pain which can be debilitating or have some obvious impact on the person's functioning (e.g. heart palpitations, severe pain in joints, etc) and this would make them more likely to actually consult a doctor about it so that information would get recorded and contribute to the overall health data collected by the Government - I don't know if this is a 'correct' answer but it's one way of thinking about it

[Rod]

yearning implicity I don't understand why age standardised rates is?

Also using examples, discuss benefits of using age-strandardised date instead of raw data??

[Anchy]

Key knowledge dot point: health status of Australians compared with populations in other developed countries

Key skill: use and interpret data to compare the health status of Australia’s population with that of other
developed countries

I'm under the impression that i don't have to actually memorize specific statistics or data and that statistics will be given to me to analyse. Can someone confirm this?

If so, how would i study this specific area/topic?

[mad_maxine]

Key knowledge dot point: health status of Australians compared with populations in other developed countries

Key skill: use and interpret data to compare the health status of Australia’s population with that of other
developed countries

I'm under the impression that i don't have to actually memorize specific statistics or data and that statistics will be given to me to analyse. Can someone confirm this?

If so, how would i study this specific area/topic?

You don't have to memorise statistics or data. It will be given to you in a question, and you just have to use it as 'evidence' in your answer. It will usually be in a table or graph, and you have to compare the differing stats and data.

[Snorlax]

Key knowledge dot point: health status of Australians compared with populations in other developed countries

Key skill: use and interpret data to compare the health status of Australia’s population with that of other
developed countries

I'm under the impression that i don't have to actually memorize specific statistics or data and that statistics will be given to me to analyse. Can someone confirm this?

If so, how would i study this specific area/topic?

Yes!
My teacher said, NEVER are you required to memorise statistics - mostly because it's usually changing.
Just know the general trend/gist of things. eg. Japan having higher LE than Australia etc.

The textbook/past exams usually have a lot of data/stats questions, so run through them. Easy to find them..

[Anchy]

Yes!
My teacher said, NEVER are you required to memorise statistics - mostly because it's usually changing.
Just know the general trend/gist of things. eg. Japan having higher LE than Australia etc.

The textbook/past exams usually have a lot of data/stats questions, so run through them. Easy to find them..

You don't have to memorise statistics or data. It will be given to you in a question, and you just have to use it as 'evidence' in your answer. It will usually be in a table or graph, and you have to compare the differing stats and data.

Thanks guys.

[madhatter117]

Hi,
Kind of new to this whole thing but I was wondering if someone could answer some questions for me?
I was wondering if a question asked "Explain burden of disease OR Explain HALE" would it be wanting more than just the definition?? Would it be wanting the definition and then a sentence of explanation in your own words?
Also when answering questions that are asking about how determinants are impacting on health, are you to just make assumptions and scenarios? For example is it more appropriate to say that body weight MAY affect mental health as the person MIGHT feel depressed due to their appearance as opposed to say it WILL. Does this question make sense? haha, sorry if I am not making myself clear.

[yearningforsimplicity]

yearning implicity I don't understand why age standardised rates is?

Also using examples, discuss benefits of using age-strandardised date instead of raw data??

Hmmm I don't really have a detailed understanding of what it is but if I remember correctly, I think age-standardised rates is when they take a study population So for e.g. we might take the population to be Australians aged 18-26 living in metropolitan Melbourne. Then, we take data for other 18-26 year olds living in other parts of Australia (e.g. rural areas, remote areas). Because the data for these other groups within that age range will be different (due to living in different geographical locations), we adjust (or standardise - 'make the same') each of these groups data to be similar to the study population's. This is apparently done so that variables of age are controlled for when we compare data for different population groups within Australia

 Luckily, you DONT need to know what age-standardised rates are for the exam haha it's all a bit too statistical But basically age standardised data is somewhat better than raw data because I think it sort of eliminates differences that variables might bring up which might get in the way of statistical analysis of data e.g. through standardising different age ranges, different time periods, different population groups, we're eliminating differences and making the scope of data we have to work with a little more compact so that might be more effective for analysis? Hahah I'm not sure if I've even explained this right sorry (I'm no good with Stats ) so someone please correct me if I'm wrong!

[yearningforsimplicity]

Hi,
Kind of new to this whole thing but I was wondering if someone could answer some questions for me?
I was wondering if a question asked "Explain burden of disease OR Explain HALE" would it be wanting more than just the definition?? Would it be wanting the definition and then a sentence of explanation in your own words?

Heyyy, welcome to the HHD board! 

With Qs asking you to "explain" burden of disease or HALE, you basically have to write the definition You don't need to go into further explanation in your own words, but you can if you want to haha. Basically, some definitions have extra components in them that some people miss out on and these are what you need to include in the "explain" sort of Qs (actually you should include them in the normal "define" Qs too! )

E.g. with Burden of Disease, sometimes people don't mention that it is measured in a unit called the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY). To be on the safe side and be guaranteed the full mark for the BOD definition, you should probably write it out like this:

"Burden of disease is a measure of the impact of diseases and injuries; specifically it measures the gap between current health status and an ideal situation where everyone lives to an old age free of disease and disability. It is measured in a unit called the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY)".

It also depends on the marks though Usually burden of disease definitions will be in the range of 2-3 marks and usually the above definition should suffice Sometimes the instruction will further ask you to "explain the unit with which the Burden of Disease is measured" so then you'll have to go into further explanation of YLL and YLD indicators of the DALY

Also when answering questions that are asking about how determinants are impacting on health, are you to just make assumptions and scenarios? For example is it more appropriate to say that body weight MAY affect mental health as the person MIGHT feel depressed due to their appearance as opposed to say it WILL. Does this question make sense? haha, sorry if I am not making myself clear.

Yess that's totally fine! In fact, that's actually a good thing because it can help to broaden the answers you devise for the Q - just be sure that whatever assumption you're making still links up to the Q Anyway, it's always a risk to be too definite in the way you express your answer Even with data analysis Qs, you should never say something like "cardiovascular rates always tend to be higher in men than women" but rather say "TEND TO BE HIGHER in men than women" - because obviously our health stats are always changing and while men do have higher rates of CVD for now, we can't be soooooo sure about that ALWAYS being the case If you do see a trend in a graph that appears to show "men ALWAYS having higher rates of CVD", you can alternatively use the term "consistently" (within the data, men consistently have higher rates of CVD than women). Also, using terms like "tend to", "usually", "appear to" also make it more obvious that you're interpreting and actively finding trends in the data which is always good for data analysis type Qs So yepp you can make assumptions but just make sure that it does link up to whatever case study/information they have given you in the Q

[Anchy]

I'm currently doing a few practice SACs and was wondering how this q would be structured in terms of mark allocation.

Australia is considered a developed country, as are Sweden and Japan. Select one of these countries and discuss three ways that health status in Australia compares to this country. (6 marks)

Would it be something like this?

- Japan have higher life expectancy (1 mark)
- "Insert data evidence here" (2 marks)
- Japan have higher HALE (3 marks)
- "insert data evidence here" (4 marks)
- Japan have lower U5MR (5 marks)
- "Insert data evidence here" (6 marks)

Also, no data, statistics or graphs were given with this question? Did the previous study design require students to memorize statistics?, as the current practice SAC i'm doing is from 2010.

Thanks!

[Smiley_]

I'm currently doing a few practice SACs and was wondering how this q would be structured in terms of mark allocation.

Australia is considered a developed country, as are Sweden and Japan. Select one of these countries and discuss three ways that health status in Australia compares to this country. (6 marks)

Would it be something like this?

- Japan have higher life expectancy (1 mark)
- "Insert data evidence here" (2 marks)
- Japan have higher HALE (3 marks)
- "insert data evidence here" (4 marks)
- Japan have lower U5MR (5 marks)
- "Insert data evidence here" (6 marks)

Also, no data, statistics or graphs were given with this question? Did the previous study design require students to memorize statistics?, as the current practice SAC i'm doing is from 2010.

Thanks!

I'm not sure about the previous study design but your answer structure seems fine, because you will get a table to read the data off.

But it doesn't hurt to know a few things such as Australia and Japan have similar life expectancies and the USA had a higher rate of obesity, that sort of thing.

But for this dot point you will get a table, or be asked to identify reasons for this trend.

[Bluegirl]

When it comes to determinants of health do we need to know specifically how they work?
E.g how cholesterol or impaired glucose regulation works or the two types of BP?