Risk factors: overview
This area of the website includes information on risk factors known to influence health. These are either behavioural or clinical in nature. Behavioural risk factors include alcohol, diet and nutrition, drugs, gambling, physical activity, sexual health, and tobacco use (the violence section has been combined with the crime section and this now sits under the Wider Determinants main menu heading).
Clinical risk factors can be described as physiological attributes which at certain levels may be associated with an increased risk of certain diseases or death. They are 'clinical' in that they usually require some form of clinical assessment through measurement, or biochemical analysis of a blood sample. The three clinical risk factors included in this section are:
- High blood pressure - high blood pressure makes a major contribution to stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.
- High cholesterol - high cholesterol substantially increases the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, and it is also linked to diabetes and high blood pressure.
- Obesity - being overweight shortens life expectancy and substantially increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, gall bladder disease and other conditions.
It is important to remember that many of these risk factors are both interlinked and closely related to other health determinants, including many featured elsewhere on this website (e.g. see the Wider Determinants area of the website). People's behaviour, for example, can be constrained or strongly influenced by the circumstances in which they live. Also, individual behaviours can impact on other health-related factors, for example, the effect of alcohol on accidents and domestic abuse.
When considering and researching the health of populations, there is a tendency to focus on single diseases and single risk factors. More often than not, however, an individual has more than one risk factor present and there is an increasing awareness of the need to consider multiple risk factors.
