Heart, stroke and vascular disease: Australian facts

What is a risk factor?

Risk factors are attributes, characteristics or exposures that increase the likelihood of a person developing a disease or health disorder.

Behavioural risk factors are health-related behaviours that individuals have the most ability to modify. Key behavioural risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) include:

• smoking
• diet
• physical activity
• alcohol consumption.

Biomedical risk factors are bodily states that have an impact on a person's risk of disease. Biomedical risk factors for CVD include:

• high blood pressure (also known as hypertension)
• abnormal blood lipids, including raised cholesterol
• diabetes
• overweight and obesity.

Some biomedical risk factors can be influenced by health behaviours. Others, such as type 1 diabetes, occur independently of behaviours.

Fixed risk factors cannot be modified. Fixed risk factors for CVD include:

• ageing
• sex recorded at birth
• family history of cardiovascular disease (through inherited genes or through sharing an environment of risky health behaviours).

Other non-traditional risk factors such as living with a mental health condition can also increase the risk of developing heart disease (Heart Foundation 2023).

For most behavioural and biomedical risk factors there is no known threshold at which risk begins. The relationship between risk and disease is continuous – there is an increasing effect as exposure to the risk factor increases. Having multiple risk factors further escalates risk.

Many chronic diseases, including CVD, share behavioural and biomedical risk factors. Modifying these risk factors can reduce an individual's risk of developing CVD prematurely and result in substantial health benefits by reducing illness and mortality rates.