The Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 requires the Chief Health Officer to publish a comprehensive report on public health and wellbeing in Victoria every two years. The last Chief Health Officer report was the 2016 report published in 2018.
This 2018 report has used data primarily from reports published or data available to the department up to 31 December 2018. These reports relate to data collected in 2018 or earlier. In cases where limited data was available on a given topic, reports published or data available to the department in early 2019 were sourced.
As this is an online report, links to some of the sources of data have been added to provide further digital content. In some cases, these links provide content that has been updated since writing. This means that readers can obtain up-to-date data and information in greater detail.
The articles presented in this report do not represent an exhaustive examination of each topic; rather they present an overview of each topic with links to other reports for more detailed information or other topics not covered in this report.
Throughout this report, the word 'department' refers to the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.
Reviewed 17 April 2023