Dealing with a lifetime of disease

How individuals and communities can better deal with increasing rates of chronic illness in Australia will be the main focus of a health policy roundtable taking place at The Australian National University today. The roundtable forms part of the Serious and Continuing Illness Policy and Practice Study (SCIPPS) run by the Menzies Centre for Health Policy - a collaboration between ANU and the University of Sydney. It will bring together leading experts from the health, welfare, academic and government sectors from around Australia to examine how health literacy and partnerships can help deal with ongoing illness in our communities. Roundtable convenor Mr Robert Wells, Director of the Australian Primary Healthcare Research Institute at ANU, said that while 40 per cent of Australians have adequate levels of health literacy, around 80 per cent of the population will experience serious or chronic illnesses in their lifetime. "Identifying symptoms of illness and relating them to any single illness can be tricky and requires an effective level of personal health literacy. The SCIPPS study found that inadequate health literacy was a major barrier to effective self-management of chronic illness. "The study, in common with other studies, found that many older Australians have several chronic illnesses at the same time.