Check your risk of type 2 diabetes in a few minutes

Type 2 diabetes often develops quietly. Plenty of people live with it for years before it is picked up. By then the damage it does to eyes, kidneys, nerves and blood vessels has already begun. Risk can be measured well before any of that, using a free questionnaire that takes a few minutes.

The questionnaire

AUSDRISK is the Australian Type 2 Diabetes Risk Assessment Tool, published by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. It estimates how likely you are to develop type 2 diabetes in the next five years.

It asks ten short questions. Some are about you: your age, your sex, your waist measurement and your family history. Others cover your health and habits, including past high blood glucose readings, blood pressure medicine, smoking, how much you move and how often you eat vegetables and fruit.

No blood test is involved. You need a tape measure for the waist question. That is all.

What the score means

A score of 12 or more means you are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes within five years, or that you may already have it without knowing.

The Department of Health sets out what each band means. At 12 to 15 points, around 1 person in every 14 will develop diabetes. At 16 to 19 points it is around 1 in 7. At 20 points or more it is around 1 in 3.

A lower score is not a clean bill of health for life. Risk climbs with age and with waist measurement, so the questionnaire is worth repeating every few years.

Why this matters in the Riverina

Diabetes is not spread evenly across Australia. AIHW figures for 2022 to 2024 show that, after adjusting for age, people in outer regional and remote areas were 1.4 and 1.5 times as likely to have diabetes as people in major cities and inner regional areas. Death rates from diabetes in remote and very remote areas run between 2.5 and 4 times the major city rate.

Distance explains part of that. So does the nature of the condition. Something with no symptoms is easy to leave alone.

If your score comes back high

Bring the result in. A high score is a reason for a conversation, not a diagnosis. AUSDRISK estimates risk from a questionnaire. It does not measure blood glucose.

Medicare funds a consultation built for exactly this. Under MBS item 713, a Type 2 Diabetes Risk Evaluation is available to patients aged 40 to 49 who score in the high range. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients aged 15 to 54 are also eligible. The questionnaire must have been completed within the previous three months. The evaluation covers a review of the risk factors behind your score, then steps to address them or to rule diabetes out where that is appropriate. It can be claimed once every three years.

Falling outside those age ranges does not make a high score less worth raising. The item number describes what Medicare funds, not who benefits from the conversation.

Where to start

Do the questionnaire. It is free and it sits on the health.gov.au website, with a printable version if you would rather work through it on paper. Then book a time to talk it through.

Call us on 02 6953 4333 or book online through HotDoc.

Source

Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, The Australian Type 2 Diabetes Risk Assessment Tool (AUSDRISK) and its scoring information, health.gov.au. Medicare Benefits Schedule note AN.7.13, Type 2 Diabetes Risk Evaluation, item 713. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Diabetes: Australian facts, aihw.gov.au.

This article is general information. It is not a substitute for advice about your own health.