Americans spend more time on average living with diseases compared to people in other countries, according to a recent study from the American Medical Association. Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the retrospective study found that Americans live with diseases on average for 12.4 years. The main diseases with which individuals live long-term in the United States are mental illness, substance use disorder and musculoskeletal conditions.
To determine this, the authors studied what’s known as the healthspan-lifespan gap, a ratio of the number of years lived with disease or disability, as opposed to simply one’s overall lifespan. It is considered an important metric for measuring the holistic health of individuals members in a society.
Using data from all 183 member states of the World Health Organization, the researchers report that the overall the healthspan-lifespan gap has increased across the world within the last twenty years. . The average healthspan-lifespan gap was 9.6 years, while the United States had a gap of 12.4 years,the largest within any country. This can be explained by a rise in noncommunicable diseases.
The authors also discovered a larger healthspan-lifespan gap in women than men, “associated with a disproportionately larger burden of noncommunicable diseases in women.”
“A sex difference was observed with women presenting a mean healthspan-lifespan gap of 2.4 (0.5) years wider than men,” the authors wrote. “These results underscore that around the world, while people live longer, they live a greater number of years burdened by disease. To identify drivers of the healthspan-lifespan gap, associated demographic, health, and economic characteristics need to be investigated by geography.”
