Cardiovascular health status among Australian adults

Background The American Heart Association (AHA) committee recently set a guideline to define and monitor the cardiovascular health status. This study aimed to estimate cardiovascular health status among Australian adults using the guideline. Methods We used data from a nationally representative sample of 7499 adults (age ≥18 years) from 2011 to 2012 Australian Health Survey. We applied the modified AHA's definition to estimate the ideal proportions of the seven metrics and the overall cardiovascular health status. Results Ideal status was most prevalent for fasting plasma glucose (83.6%) and least observed for dietary pattern (4.8%). The estimated percentage of ideal cardiovascular health was 0.15% in Australian adults. An estimated 0.52% of Australian adults had all four ideal cardiovascular health factors, and 16.38% had all four ideal cardiovascular health behaviors. There exist some age and sex variations for the ideal status of individual metric and the overall cardiovascular health. Conclusion The percentage of ideal cardiovascular health in Australian adults is extremely low. Public health policies should be implemented to improve the population-wide cardiovascular health status in Australia.