Despite steady improvement over the last three decades, cardiovascular disease remains one of the biggest causes of death in Australia and continues to generate a considerable burden on the population in terms of illness and disability. In relation to direct health care expenditure, cardiovascular disease is the most expensive health condition, costing 11% or 5.4 billion dollars of the total allocated health system expenditure.Despite steady improvement over the last three decades, cardiovascular disease remains one of the biggest causes of death in Australia and continues to generate a considerable burden on the population in terms of illness and disability. In relation to direct health care expenditure, cardiovascular disease is the most expensive health condition, costing 11% or 5.4 billion dollars of the total allocated health system expenditure in 2000-01 (AIHW 2005a). The incidence of cardiovascular disease increases with age and the number of people with cardiovascular disease may increase in the future as the number of older Australians increases (AIHW 2004).