Halt and reverse the rise in overweight and obesity.
Reduce the prevalence of daily smoking among adult Australians aged 18+ from 17.4% in 2007 to 10% or lower.
Reduce the proportion of Australians who drink at short-term risky/high-risk levels to 14%, and the proportion of Australians who drink at long-term risky/high-risk levels to 7%.
Contribute to the ‘Close the Gap’ target for Indigenous people, reducing the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.[30]

Achieving these targets will require a staged approach over time, including substantial new injections of funding and sustained effort.

These targets are consistent with those of the COAG National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health and the National Healthcare Agreement performance targets, which include:

Increase the proportion of children and adults meeting national guidelines for healthy body weight by 3 percentage points within 10 years
Increase the proportion of children and adults meeting national guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity by 15% within six years
Help assure Australian children of a healthy start to life, including through promoting positive parenting and supportive communities, and with an emphasis on the new

In addition to these targets and aligned with the COAG outcome measures, the Taskforce has developed a number of interim targets and performance measures for each of the topic areas, which are set out in the relevant chapters.

Measuring progress

It is necessary to strengthen Australia’s capacity to effectively monitor, evaluate and build evidence around preventative health. A number of ambitious targets relating to overweight and obesity, alcohol and tobacco have been set by this Strategy, and Australians will need to know how effective our preventative health programs are and whether we are on track to meet these targets.

The Strategy has been designed to focus on implementation, measurement and accountability – a cyclical approach of ‘do, measure, report – do, measure, report’. The development of a robust performance framework to underpin the Strategy and inform its implementation is therefore a priority. Progress will be monitored at three levels:

Health status and outcomes
Determinants of health
Program and systems performance

Changes in health outcomes and determinants of health are the long-term measures of the success of this strategy. However, these indicators are most reliably measured over several years at the population level, and changes cannot easily be attributed to specific program elements. Complementing these longer term measures are the shorter term program and system-level performance indicators more closely related to the specific priority actions and programs. These program and system performance measures are summarised in the tables within this strategy. In addition, indicators relevant to enabling infrastructure for prevention will also be developed and monitored.
Top of Page

Performance indicators for obesity, tobacco and alcohol prevention

Health outcome measures (all to be reported by Indigenous status)

Deaths attributable to tobacco, alcohol, overweight and obesity
Hospital separations for tobacco, alcohol, overweight and obesity

Determinants of health measures (all to be reported by Indigenous status and by index of relative social disadvantage of place of residence)

Proportion of adults who are daily smokers
Proportion of adult smokers who have attempted to quit in last year or who intend to quit in next three months
Proportion of children who smoke at least weekly or monthly and proportion who have smoked at least 100 cigarettes
Proportion of adults and children who live in a home where anyone smokes indoors
Proportion of adults and children at risk of long-term harm from alcohol
Proportion of adults and children at risk of short-term harm from alcohol at least once a month
Proportion of adults and children overweight or obese
Proportion of adults and children eating sufficient daily serves of fruit and vegetables
Proportion of adults insufficiently physically active to obtain a health benefit
Proportion of people walking, cycling or using public transport to travel to work or school
Proportion of babies breastfed for six months or more

Program and system performance measures (reporting by Indigenous status and by index or relative social disadvantage as appropriate)
These measures are summarised in the tables within the obesity, tobacco and alcohol chapters. They include but are not limited to the following measures:

Knowledge, attitudes and awareness of risks associated with tobacco use, risk drinking and overweight and obesity
Recall of social marketing campaigns for obesity, tobacco and alcohol
Proportion of Australian population not covered by legislative restrictions on promotion and use of tobacco and alcohol that operate at state and territory level
Proportions of overweight or obese people, smokers or people at risk of short- or long-term harm from alcohol receiving brief interventions in primary healthcare settings
Children’s exposure to advertisements for EDNP food and beverages
Food price disparity in rural and remote areas
Number and proportion of state and municipal plans that include steps to tackle obesity
Number and proportion of schools with comprehensive programs in place that support healthy eating and physical activity
Number and proportion of workplaces that have comprehensive programs in place to support healthy living
Proportion of retailers breaching tobacco-related legislation
Number of instances where tobacco products are being promoted
Price of cigarettes (recommended retail price, average price paid by consumers and price in comparison to average weekly earnings)
Proportion of smokers surveyed who report purchase of illicit tobacco products and proportion of children who report that they have been able to purchase tobacco products from retail outlets
Alcohol outlet density by city/town and region
Taxation incentives for the production and consumption of low alcohol products
Systems and practices to proactively police licensed venues, events and harms
Expenditure on research and evaluation relating to the control of alcohol, tobacco and overweight and obesity in Indigenous and other disadvantaged communities

Enabling infrastructure measures
These may include indicators relevant to workforce, investment in social marketing campaigns and investment in prevention research including understanding of social determinants of health behaviour, modelling of health impact policy options and evaluation of programs. They would also include measures relevant to the development of partnerships and engagement/participation of stakeholders with the Strategy.
Top of Page

|TOC|next page