What's the difference between life expectancy and health expectancy?

The average number of years lived in poor health is the average life expectancy minus the average number of years lived in good health (healthy life expectancy). The World Health Organization (WHO) measures HLE, called health-adjusted life expectancy, in 193 countries. With the average life expectancy in the United States currently hovering around 79 years, the age at which most Americans can expect to live is still forty-four years younger than human life expectancy. Counties with populations of at least ten thousand men and ten thousand women, grouped over five years, to create stable life expectancy estimates (Ezzati et al.

For example, in 2004, Belgian women had an DFLE at birth at age 66.6; therefore, on average, they spent 82 percent (66.6 years of a total LE of 81.4 years) of their lives without disabilities. He has more than 10 years of experience in the California public health system addressing communicable diseases, health policies and disaster preparedness. Based on this study, the EC concluded that the HLY indicator is relevant to policies, impact assessment and monitoring related to labor force participation, pensions, health conditions and lifestyles. The study found that, among older people, people with diabetes had a lower life expectancy and were active for a smaller percentage of their remaining life, compared to people without diabetes.

While measuring mortality is much more common than measuring health status, a small population size can be a major problem in calculating life expectancy, since population mortality rates are low, especially in younger age groups. Several studies have shown that improving lifestyle and health behaviors, such as eating more nutritious foods, not smoking, losing weight and being more physically active, reduces morbidity rather than mortality and, therefore, decreases the amount of time spent with the disease (Hubert et al. To better understand human life expectancy, let's delve a little deeper into the concept and its important distinctions from other commonly used terms. The trust is now interested in evaluating the extent to which additional years of life are healthy years of life.

One of the few studies on the use of HLE at the group level of healthcare providers investigated the feasibility of monitoring the health of older people with and without diabetes using a measure of “active life expectancy” using primary care data routinely collected at a general office in England (Jagger et al. Insurers, employers and providers are increasingly using health risk assessments, or HRAs, for a variety of purposes. Compared to mortality and morbidity rates, HLE is a more intuitive and meaningful measure of population health that people can identify with, since people care a lot about living a long and healthy life.

Christine Febles
Christine Febles

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