As an enclosed area (without space), it is the name of an Ohio health insurance company and a British mail-order company, to name just two. Of health + duration, modeled according to life expectancy. There are many serious childhood disorders, for example, that cause poor enough health that, by any reasonable definition, they constitute the end of that person's hope for health. Studies that measure only one or two age-related phenotypes and make statements about overall health expectancy are particularly problematic.
Instead, health itself could be better considered as a continuous variable that changes dynamically throughout life. However, it is immediately apparent that there are some major problems with this definition of health period. While it is unlikely that everyone will agree on a single definition, a common definition is that health expectancy is the period of life spent in good health, free from the chronic diseases and disabilities of aging. This new research reflects a growing tendency among medical experts to distinguish between life expectancy, the period between birth and death, and the duration of health, the period in which a person or animal is in top shape.
The concept of hope for health is relatively new in geroscience research, which seeks to understand the biological mechanisms of aging (Burch et al. Perhaps it would be more informative to consider the area below the health curve for a given period of time or throughout life, in order to obtain a single “health” metric for each individual (fig. It is a concept that is easy to understand and is more pleasing to the general public than increasing life expectancy). This is important, since it has been suggested that some interventions increase health expectancy without increasing life expectancy, and such interventions would have clinical utility if they had similar health benefits in people.
Until a comprehensive health metric is adopted, it seems prudent to refrain from using the term “health period” in scientific literature, except as a conceptual construct. The depth, meaning and value of health are often determined and defined by the way in which each person deals with the misfortune, loss, injustice and unexpected challenges that arise throughout life. In principle, a “health index” could be developed that quantifies general health, perhaps similar to established frailty indices (Kane et al.
