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Ways to Use This Report
The State of Aging and Health in America online report is designed to
provide information on key indicators of older adult health to public health
and aging professionals, journalists, policy makers, and others. Feedback has
shown that it is useful for:
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Grant writing: This report provides context and key
statistics related to older adult health at the national and state level, which
can help provide the background for grant proposals.
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Program and strategic planning: State-level data can be
used to identify particular areas of need and can be used to target resources
to the most urgent health issues. The report’s Calls to Action and program and
state examples illustrate how evidence-based approaches can be used to improve
the health of older adults.
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Health news reporting: The introductory material provides a
good context of the overall health issues facing older adults in the United
States and highlights new public health priorities in the area of aging.
Journalists working at the national, state, and local levels can use the data
to highlight particular areas of need or success stories, and use the Calls to
Action and programs that work to illustrate potential solutions. The state
examples have rich state-specific information that can be used for an in-depth
article on a particular program or activity.
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Orienting users to aging issues: This report may be used as a
reference document and as a general overview of the health of older Americans,
which can be very helpful when orienting new audiences to the field of aging.
The Indicators
This report includes data on 15 older adult health indicators in four
areas: health status (physically unhealthy days, frequent mental distress,
complete tooth loss, and disability); health behaviors (absence of leisure-time
physical activity, consumption of fruits and vegetables, obesity, and smoking);
preventive care and screening (influenza and pneumonia vaccination, mammograms,
colorectal cancer screening, up-to-date status on selected preventive services,
and cholesterol checks); and injury (hospitalizations for hip fractures). These
indicators were chosen because they are each modifiable, and taken as a whole,
they present a comprehensive picture of older adult health.
About the Data
This report provides the most current national- and state-level data. Although
we know that local-level data is often the most useful for program planning,
CDC does not have ready access to such data. Over the last few years, we’ve
noted several states and communities that have developed innovative ways to
ensure that key information on the health of older adults is readily available
to those who need it for planning programs, setting priorities, and tracking
trends at the local level. By highlighting such success stories, we hope to
provide resources for other localities to create similar reports.
Fourteen of the fifteen indicators (all except hip fracture hospitalization)
use data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance
System (BRFSS), a state-based, random telephone survey
of adults age 18 and older in the United States. Some local level data is
available through BRFSS, through the
Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART)
project, which collects data from selected metropolitan and micropolitan
statistical areas (MMSAs) with 500 or more respondents. Although
the BRFSS is one of our most useful tools for assessing the health of the older
adult population, it has at least three limitations. First, it excludes people
who do not have telephones or who live in institutions such as nursing homes.
Second, it may under-represent people who are severely impaired because they
lack the functional capacity required to participate in the survey. Third, all
responses to the BRFSS are self-reported and therefore have not been confirmed
by a health care provider.
Data for the remaining indicator, hip fracture hospitalizations, comes from the
National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS),
which gathers information on characteristics of inpatients discharged from
nonfederal short-stay hospitals in the United States. The survey is limited to
hospitals with an average length of stay of fewer than 30 days for all
patients, general hospitals, and children’s general hospitals. It excludes
federal, military, and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, as well as
hospital units of institutions (such as prison hospitals) and hospitals with
fewer than six patient beds.
Background
The United States population is aging at an unprecedented rate. By 2030, the
number of Americans who are 65 or older will more than double to 70 million
people, or one in every five Americans. Because of this dramatic growth in both
the number and percentage of older adults, CDC has made improving the health
status and addressing the health needs of this age group one of its top agency
priorities.
Because CDC is the primary federal agency for collecting and disseminating U.S.
health data, national public health and aging organizations look to CDC to
provide health data specific to older Americans. The data are also needed by
policy makers at all levels to make informed decisions and appropriate resource
allocations.
In spring 2003, CDC and the Center for the Advancement of Health, with
additional support from the Merck Institute of Aging and Health (MIAH) and the
MacArthur Foundation, convened the Making Health Count for Older Americans
summit. This summit brought together diverse leaders in public health and aging
to discuss what information on older adults is needed by policy makers, public
health practitioners, journalists, and others, and in what format this
information might best be shared. The feedback received during this meeting
made it clear that we should follow the example set by MIAH and the
Gerontological Society of America (GSA) with their 2002 State of Aging and
Health in America report, with the addition of some more health
indicators and state examples.
After the summit, CDC, MIAH, and GSA initiated a partnership to develop and
disseminate The State of Aging and Health in America 2004 report.
The 2004 edition of the report (available in hard copies and online
incorporated feedback from the summit and was released at the November 2004 GSA
Annual Meeting. Because it was extremely well received by its intended audience
of public health and aging professionals, decision makers, and the media, CDC
and MIAH (now absorbed into the larger Merck Company Foundation) agreed to
publish a 2007 edition of the report.
User feedback on the 2004 edition indicated that an online, customizable format
would help users to access the information more efficiently. In response, CDC
has created this online version, which allows users to get targeted information
on a particular state, region, or indicator of interest.
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