About the Study

Study overview

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

Information on the health of Study participants is collected via a baseline questionnaire that is 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 are 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.

Click here to see a summary of the Study protocol.