Data source
ABS National Health Survey
This web report contains results from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) National Health Survey (NHS) 2017–18, collected between July 2017 and June 2018.
The 2017–18 NHS is the most recent in a series of national health surveys conducted by the ABS. It was designed to collect a range of information about the health of Australians, including:
- prevalence of long-term health conditions
- health risk factors such as tobacco smoking, overweight and obesity, alcohol consumption and exercise
- demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
When interpreting data from the 2017–18 NHS, some limitations need to be considered:
- Much of the data is self-reported and therefore relies on respondents knowing and providing accurate information.
- The survey is community-based and does not include information from people living in nursing homes or otherwise institutionalised.
Residents of Very remote areas and discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are out of scope for the survey. While this is unlikely to affect national estimates, data on chronic condition multimorbidity in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is out of scope for this report. For further information, refer to the section ‘Scope of the survey’ in the ABS National Health Survey: First Results methodology, 2017–18.