Americans Living Longer, More Healthy
Lives
Thanks to medical advances, better
treatments and new drugs not available a generation ago, the average American
born today can expect to live 3.8 years longer than a person born two decades
ago.
Despite all these new technologies, however, is our increased life expectancy actually adding active and healthy years to our lives? That question has remained largely unanswered -- until now. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have found that the average 25-year-old American today can look forward to 2.4 more years of a healthy life than 20 years ago while a 65-year-old today has gained 1.7 years.
Despite all these new technologies, however, is our increased life expectancy actually adding active and healthy years to our lives? That question has remained largely unanswered -- until now. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have found that the average 25-year-old American today can look forward to 2.4 more years of a healthy life than 20 years ago while a 65-year-old today has gained 1.7 years.
Synthesizing data from multiple
government-sponsored health surveys conducted over the last 21 years, Allison
Rosen, MD, associate professor of Quantitative Health Sciences at UMMS, Susan
Stewart, researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and David
Cutler, professor of economics at Harvard University, were able, for the first
time, to measure how the quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE) of all
Americans has changed over time.
The study's findings are described in a paper published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
The study's findings are described in a paper published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
"QALE tells us more than how long a person can expect to live," said Dr. Rosen, senior author on the study. "It tells us what the relative quality of those added years are in terms of physical, emotional and mental well-being. Though many studies have measured this in different ways, this is really the first time we've been able to capture this type of information across the whole U.S. population over an extended period."
The data shows that Americans are
living longer, reporting fewer symptoms of disease, have more energy and show
fewer impairment in everyday tasks such as walking than a generation ago.
According to the study authors, a 25-year-old person today can expect to live 6
percent or 2.4 quality years longer than their 1987 counterpart. Meanwhile, a
65-year-old person will gain 1.7 quality years, a 14 percent increase from a
generation ago.
Thanks to improvements in health
care, many conditions are far more treatable today than 25 years ago, Rosen
said. Heart disease, for instance, was potentially much more debilitating a
generation ago and patients often suffered a decline in quality of life as a
result. "Today, it is far less likely that a patient recovering from a
heart attack will become institutionalized or need around-the-clock care the
way they once might have," Rosen said. They also found that health gains
made as a result of smoking cessation programs were being off-set, in part, by
increases in obesity.
Today, Americans are more likely to
see quality of life declines related to chronic, degenerative diseases such as
Alzheimer's and dementia, while younger Americans appear to be experiencing
problems related to a sedentary lifestyle.
The authors also identified some
troubling health trends. Among these was an increase in anxiety among young and
middle-aged people beginning in 2001. Problems with walking have increased
significantly among non-elderly over the last decade.
In the past, researchers have had a
difficult time measuring population health beyond simple life expectancy
because quality of life incorporates so many variables -- physical well-being,
mental health, pain, vitality, energy, emotional state -- that it's difficult
to bring all these things together cohesively into a single number. Making it
even more challenging, the surveys that measure quality of life are rarely
consistent with each other because they all define health and quality of life
differently.
Using multiple national surveys that
asked Americans about their health in various ways over the last 21 years, the
authors solved this problem by identifying areas where the studies overlapped,
allowing them to build a single, large data set which covered the entire adult
population over more than two decades.
"Comprehensive measures of the
overall health of the nation are practically nonexistent," said Rosen.
"This study shows how existing national data can be used to systematically
measure whether the population is getting healthier -- not just living
longer."
As the Affordable Care Act goes into
effect in 2014, the value of a single, consistent way of measuring improvements
in health over a large population will be invaluable in assessing the impact of
these pending changes according to the authors.
"Having a consistent measure of
population health represents a major advance in our ability to measure the
impact of health care reform on the health -- not just the health care use --
of all Americans," said Rosen. "The bottom line in assessing the success
of the ACA is whether or not we are getting the most health from our investment
of increasingly limited resources. Are we getting the most health bang for our
bucks?"
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided
by University
of Massachusetts Medical School.
The original article was written by Jim Fessenden.
Note: Materials may be edited for
content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited
above.
Journal Reference:
1.
Susan T. Stewart, David M. Cutler,
Allison B. Rosen. US Trends in Quality-Adjusted Life Expectancy From
1987 to 2008: Combining National Surveys to More Broadly Track the Health of
the Nation. American Journal of Public Health, 2013; : e1
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301250
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University
of Massachusetts Medical School (2013, September 12). Americans living longer,
more healthy lives. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 13, 2013,
from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130912203321.htm