History
The European Union has decided to include a small set of health expectancies among its European Community Health Indicators (ECHI) to provide synthetic measures of disability, chronic morbidity, and perceived health. Therefore the Minimum European Health Module (MEHM), composed of 3 general questions covering these dimensions, has been introduced into the Eurostat EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC) to improve the comparability of health expectancies between countries. In addition life expectancy without long term activity limitation, based on the disability question, was selected in 2004 to be one of the structural indicators to be examined every year, during the European Spring Council for assessing the EU strategic goals (Context
The dramatic increase in the life expectancy in the most developed countries in general and in the countries of the European Union in particular represents one of the most significant achievements of recent decades. The further challenge confronts the European Community: :''"increasing life expectancy must be by the increase of its part spent in "good" health".'' In this context, the classical mortality indicators are no longer sufficient to monitor the health status of the populations of the European countries. The availability of health expectancy indicators dividing life expectancy into life spent in different states of health is useful to health authorities in the field ofProductivity behind Healthy Life Years monitoring
Statistical findings
In 2015, the number of healthy life years among women in the EU-28 was 63.3.Data sources and availability
Eurostat calculates information about the healthy life years at birth, at ages 50, and 65. The data is calculated and collected by using mortality statistics as well as self perceived longstanding activity limitations- a dimension that captures longstanding limitation in regards to health and/or disability to perform usual and frequent activities. An example of a question that might be asked concerning the longstanding activity limitation is: "For the last six months, to what extent have you been limited because of a health problem in activities that people usually do?" Some available answers are "severely limited", "limited but not severely", or "not limited at all".Limitations of the data
Sociological challenges
Health status is hard to define and can differ greatly from one person to another. One of the reasons is that it can be influenced by various factors affecting their evaluation of their health. Which is more, being healthy and feeling well can be defined and measured in many different ways. General symptoms mean the assessment of physical and psychological sensations that could usually be determined by a physician or a psychiatrist. Yet, they can only be felt by the patient who will subjectively explain what they feel. These assessments are usually stereotyped to pain and/or feeling of anxiety. These measures are not always observable and their tolerance can vary from one person to another depending on the social background of the person. Therefore, to combine the measures of the different health concepts that people have in their minds into a single number, there is a need to have a conceptual model that would take into consideration that health is a continuum that ranges from perfect health to death. Another problem is that the average level of health itself (not only the ways of its evaluation) is subject to the influence of different factors and is different in various sub-groups (as mortality does). The examples of such characteristics are: 1) race, and 2) ethnic group. They are the possible independent characteristics influencing as a result also the total amount of healthy life years. Different races and nationalities lead different lifestyles, eat different kinds of food, and live in different environments geographically. All these factors when taken into account could impact the chance of people getting certain diseases or losing their ability to perform a daily life activity. For example, if a certain group of people who pertain to a certain race or ethnic group, where they eat primarily unprocessed food, then these people are less prone to certain diseases and are more likely to live disease free lives for a longer time than people whose diet consists of highly processed food.Zobel, E.H., Hansen, T.W., Rossing, P. et al. Curr Obes Rep (2016) 5: 449. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-016-0233-8 Moreover, even people of the same culture and race but of different socioeconomic status could live different number of healthy life years. People of different socioeconomic status are from (or/and can afford) different living conditions associated with initially different levels of spending and the level of development of housing and communal services. For example, consider a poor family that could only afford living in a poor neighborhood where the underground water pipes have very high exposure to lead and where their house lies beside a canal where industries spit their toxic emissions. The members of this family are, according to health science, expected to suffer from health issues earlier in their lives because their lifestyle according to their socioeconomic status forces them to be exposed daily to toxic substances in their environment and to drink water that has high levels of lead. Both of these life circumstance are factors known to cause high blood pressure, kidney failures, etc. With these adverse health effects, these people would have limited ability or in other words are not considered as healthy as members of a family from their same race who live in a wealthy town where their water pipes are tested every now and then. Overall, many sociological factors need to be considered when calculating the number of healthy life years that people can live. These factors can include but are not limited to: race, ethnicity, household upbringing, and socioeconomic status.See also
*References
{{reflist, colwidth=30em * J.-M. Robine, C. Jagger, Euro-REVES group. Creating a coherent set of indicators to monitor health across Europe: the Euro-REVES 2 project. ''European Journal of Public Health'' 2003;13(3):6-14. * Healthy life years, eurostat: Statistics Explained, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Healthy_life_years_statistics * Erickson, P., Wilson, R., Shannon, I. (1995). Years of Healthy Life. ''Healthy People Statistical Notes''.External links