Jenn Savedge

Book author writes about raising kids and staying healthy.

A long life is great — as long as those extra years are healthy ones

By: Jenn Savedge

Do you want to just live, or do you want to live a long and healthy life? (Photo: Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock)

For years, health experts have been focused on one number when it comes to evaluating the health of a community: life expectancy. Life expectancy is a good indicator of things like the quality of health care systems, the financial stability of a community, and the availability of healthy foods. But new research has emerged that has some experts looking toward a different set of numbers to measure human health: healthy life expectancy. In other words, the number of years that you will spend not just living, but living a life free of disease and disability.

According to research from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), life expectancy is on the rise in many countries around the world. From 1990 to 2013, researchers found that global life expectancy rose in all but 11 of the 188 countries surveyed. Read more.