The Conditions that Keep Us from a Healthy Old Age
For people in the U.S., a handful of major conditions erode their healthy years
Katie Peek
Graphic by Katie Peek; Illustrations by Greg Betza
This series was created for Google, the Buck Institute, Optispan and Phenome Health by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors.
Join Our Community of Science Lovers!
To understand why healthspan has not kept up with increases in lifespan, longevity researchers need to know what exactly is making people chronically ill or disabled. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research organization at the University of Washington, has compiled data on people living with diseases and conditions that affect their health—a metric researchers call “years lived with disability.” As a population ages, these conditions pose a heavier burden.
These are the top contributors to years lived with disability in the U.S.:
These diseases contribute differently to disability at different life stages:
The bars show years lost to disability in the U.S., grouped into 5-year bins. To allow easier comparisons between those age bins, the data are displayed as disease occurrence per 100,000 people.
Graphic by Katie Peek; Illustrations by Greg Betza; Source: The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation; data as of 2021
Graphic by Katie Peek; Source: The World Health Organization; data as of 2021
Explore the emerging science of healthspan in other stories in this special report.
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
