OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of smoking disparities on health disparities, in terms of gap in life expectancy, in Taiwan cities and counties. METHODS Using the decomposition method of life expectancy, the contribution of each disease category to the life expectancy gap was quantitatively expressed as the number of years of life. The smoking attributable fraction (SAF) was calculated for eac...

BACKGROUND Differences in mortality and health experience across regions are well recognised and UK government policy aims to address this inequality. Methods combining life expectancy and health have concentrated on specific areas, such as self-perceived health and dementia. Few have looked within country or across different areas of health. Self-perceived health, self-perceived functional imp...

Recent major analyses of global burden of disease reinforce a familiar critique: despite vastly greater health spending than any other country, population health outcomes in the US are unacceptably poor. The Institute of Medicine estimates that we spend about $750 billion annually on health care in excess of what should achieve the observed health outcomes. Such inefficiency underlies health ca...

BACKGROUND The UK has had universal free health care and public health programmes for more than six decades. Several policy initiatives and structural reforms of the health system have been undertaken. Health expenditure has increased substantially since 1990, albeit from relatively low levels compared with other countries. We used data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Fac...

OBJECTIVE To review and evaluate the usefulness of healthy life expectancy as a global indicator of changes in a population's health. DESIGN Review of all known studies to date from the United States, mainland Europe, Canada, and the United Kingdom that have used Sullivan's method of calculating disability free life expectancy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Life expectancy and disability free life ...

BACKGROUND Smoking, physical inactivity and obesity are modifiable risk factors for morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which the co-occurrence of these behaviour-related risk factors predict healthy life expectancy and chronic disease-free life expectancy in four European cohort studies. METHODS Data were drawn from repeated waves of four cohort studie...

BACKGROUND An arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is considered the vascular access of choice, but uncertainty exists about the optimal time for its creation in pre-dialysis patients. The aim of this study was to determine the optimal vascular access referral strategy for stage 4 (glomerular filtration rate <30 ml/min/1.73 m(2)) chronic kidney disease patients using a decision analytic framework. MET...

Background and Objectives: Spiritual well-being is one of the most important aspects of the quality of life that affects women's health and development. The present study aimed to evaluate the predictive role of spiritual well-being for optimism and life expectancy among women who referred to health centers. Methods: This descriptive study was conducted based on a correlational research design...

OBJECTIVES To examine the relation between health and several dimensions of sexuality and to estimate years of sexually active life across sex and health groups in middle aged and older adults. DESIGN Cross sectional study. SETTING Two samples representative of the US population: MIDUS (the national survey of midlife development in the United States, 1995-6) and NSHAP (the national social l...

BACKGROUND We assessed the effects of smoking and smoking cessation on life expectancy and active life expectancy among persons aged 55 years or older in Beijing. METHODS This study included 1593 men and 1664 women who participated in the Beijing Longitudinal Study of Aging, which commenced in 1992 and had 4 survey waves up to year 2000. An abridged life table was used to estimate life expect...