Objectives: Low education and unhealthy lifestyle factors such as obesity, smoking, and no exercise are modifiable risk factors for disability and premature mortality. We aimed to estimate the individual and joint impact of these factors on disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) and total life expectancy (TLE).Methods: Data (n = 22,304) were from two birth cohorts (1921–26 and 1946–51) of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health and linked National Death Index between 1996 and 2016. Discrete-time multi-state Markov models were used to assess the impact on DFLE and TLE.Results: Compared to the most favourable combination of education and lifestyle factors, the least favourable combination (low education, obesity, current/past smoker, and no exercise) was associated with a loss of 5.0 years TLE, 95% confidence interval (95%CI): 3.2–6.8 and 6.4 years DFLE (95%CI: 4.8–7.8) at age 70 in the 1921–26 cohort. Corresponding losses in the 1946–51 cohort almost doubled (TLE: 11.0 years and DFLE: 13.0 years).Conclusion: Individual or co-ocurrance of lifestyle risk factors were associated with a significant loss of DFLE, with a greater loss in low-educated women and those in the 1946–51 cohort.

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Background <break><break>Exposure to ambient air pollution is strongly associated with increased cerebrovascular diseases. The 201920 bushfire season in Australia burnt 5.4 million hectares of land in New South Wales alone, with smoke so severe it affected cities in Argentina, 11,000 km away. We aimed to determine the effects of i) short-term air pollution triggered by bushfires and ii) high smoke days in increasing the daily number of hospital admissions with cerebrovascular diseases.<break><break>Methods <break><break>Hospitalisation data were accessed from the admitted patient dataset from seven local Government areas of Hunter New England Local Health District. The bushfire period was defined from 1 October 2019 to 10 February 2020, and a similar period from 2018-19 as the control. High bushfire smoke days were days when the average daily concentration of particulate matter was higher than the 95th percentile of the control period. Poisson regression models and fixed effect meta-analysis were used to analyse the data.<break><break>Results <break><break>In total, 275 patients with cerebrovascular admissions were identified, with 147 (53.5%) during the bushfire (2019-20) and 128 (46.5%) in the control period (2018-19). There was no significant increase in daily cerebrovascular disease (Incidence Rate Ratio, IRR: 1.04; 95% CI: 0.98-1.05; p-value: 0.73) or ischemic stroke (IRR: 1.18; 95% CI: 0.87-1.59; p-value: 0.28) admissions over the entire bushfire period. However, the high bushfire smoke days were associated with increased ischaemic stroke-related hospital admissions with a lag of 0-1 days (IRR: 1.28; 95% CI: 1.01-1.62; I2=18.9%). In addition, during the bushfire period, particulate matter, both PM10 and PM2.5 (defined as particulates that have an effective aerodynamic diameter of 10 microns, and 2.5 microns, respectively), were also associated with increased ischaemic stroke admissions with a lag of 0 to 3 days.<break><break>Conclusion <break><break>The results suggested an association between particulate matter and high smoke days with increased hospital admissions due to cerebrovascular diseases during the recent Australian bushfire season.