About the Study

Study Overview

The 45 and Up Study is the largest study of healthy ageing ever undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere. Over 250,000 men and women aged 45 and over across NSW – about 10% of this age group – have been recruited and will have their health followed over the coming decades.

Information on the health of 45 and Up Study participants is collected via a baseline questionnaire that was mailed to people in the target age range who are selected at random from the Medicare Australia enrolment database. Individuals resident in rural areas and those aged 80 years and over were over-sampled to ensure adequate statistical power amongst these groups. A follow-up questionnaire will also be mailed every five years.

Participants in the 45 and Up Study:

  • provide self-reported information about their background, lifestyle, health and health service use at baseline and then every five years. Questionnaire information includes: demographic data, including age, education, ethnicity, type of housing; lifestyle and habits, including physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption; current medications, history of disease and surgical procedures; functional capacity (MOS-PF) and psychological distress (Kessler-10); social support (Duke sub-scale), employment status, paid and unpaid work and income. Information to be gathered through data linkage includes: use of health and aged care services, and details of this care (including general practitioner services, emergency department visits, hospitalisations, medications, community-based aged care and residential aged care); deaths, with underlying cause; and certain incident morbidities, e.g., myocardial infarction, fractures, cancer and diabetes (as indicated by hospitalisation, death records, cancer registrations, specified Medicare items and medication use).
  • consent to link to their medical records including data from the NSW Admitted Patient Data Collection, Medical and Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (MBS and PBS) datasets, NSW Central Cancer Registry and Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) mortality data. Data linkage will take place through the Centre for Health Record Linkage (CHeReL), which includes the 45 and Up Study in its Master Linkage Key and through Medicare Australia. Inclusion in the CheReL Master Linkage Key means that linkages with a core set of datasets, including hospital, cancer and death data, will be updated on a routine and ongoing basis, making these linked data available to researchers as soon as the source datasets are updated.
  • consent to be approached about sub-studies between the five year followups where researchers, policy makers and evaluators will re-contact sub-groups of the cohort to obtain extra information not collected in the baseline questionnaire.

When funds become available, participants will also be asked to provide extra information to the study, as well as physical measures (e.g. height and weight) and samples (e.g. blood samples, buccal smears etc), to allow the study a more in-depth look at the factors affecting health.

 

Study Progress

As at August 2010:

  • Recruitment to the 45 and Up Study is now complete, with over 266,000 men and women across NSW aged 45 and over having joined the Study.
  • Baseline questionnaire data from 266,848 eligible participants is available for use in approved projects.
  • More than 120 researchers are collaborating on the Study, looking at a wide range of health issues.
  • Approval to use the Study data has been given to 66 research proposals (click here for details).
  • 41 projects with direct relevance to health policy are underway, including: Understanding the impact of social, economic and geographic disadvantage on the health of Australians in mid- to later-life; Exploring met and unmet needs for home care in NSW; Understanding the transition to retirement; Understanding the home environment of older people; Examining the influence of later life, family, disease, and disability on patterns of aged care service use, and Investigating obesity, ageing and hospitalisation.
  • 7 sub-studies that will collect additional health and lifestyle information from select Study participants are underway (click here for details).
  • 13 papers using data from the Study have been published, or accepted for publication, in national and international peer-reviewed journals (click here to view or download these papers).
  • A Policy-In-Action Roundtable, funded by the MBF Foundation, has been established to ensure that the Study data continues to be used for the most policy-relevant research. The Roundtable is comprised of representatives from government and non-government agencies.
  • The 6th Annual 45 and Up Study Collaborators’ meeting was held on 25 September 2009. This meeting was attended by over 145 researchers, the highest number of attendees to date.