With today’s modern technologies, hospitals and doctors are
able to keep people alive much longer (life span), but that doesn’t
guarantee that someone’s quality of life will be good during that
extended time (health span). Life span is how long you are
technically alive, and health span is the length of time you are
truly healthy and thriving during that time. Ideally you want your
life span to equal your health span.
Healthy life expectancy or health expectancy (HLE) is the
expected number of remaining years of life spent in good health
from a particular age, typically birth or age sixty-five, assuming
current rates of mortality and morbidity. Healthy life expectancy
is becoming a standard summary measure of population health at both
the international and national levels. It is used for a variety of
purposes, including highlighting health inequalities, targeting
resources for health promotion, evaluating the impact of health
policies, and planning for health, social, and fiscal policy.
The healthy life expectancy measure adds a ‘quality of life’
dimension to estimates of life expectancy by dividing it into time
spent in different states of health.
Life expectancy (LE) of an individual refers to the approximate
amount of time the individual is ought to live.A number of factors
influence life expectancy including gender, race, exposure to
pollution, education status, race, income level and healthcare
access.
Average life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are both
important headline measures of the health status of the population.
The healthy life expectancy measure adds a ‘quality of life’
dimension to estimates of life expectancy by dividing it into time
spent in different states of health.
The trend in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at age
65 has also been upwards in recent decades. Once they reach the age
of 65, in 2012 to 2014, males could expect to live an additional
18.8 years and females an additional 21.2 years.