Successful aging in spite of bad habits: introduction to the special section on ‘Life style and health expectancy’

Excerpt

It was with great delight that I accepted the Editors’ invitation to create a Special Section for the European Journal of Ageing: Social, Behavioural and Health Perspectives (EJA) from amongst the papers given at the 19th Annual Meeting of Réseau Espérance de Vie en Santé (REVES) held in May 2007, in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. REVES is an international organization that promotes the use of health expectancy as a population health indicator in research. Health expectancy (HE) simultaneously estimates mortality and morbidity or disability in order to quantify answers to the question of whether people are living longer with better or worse health. Whether approaching the question from an incidence or prevalence perspective, the result is an estimate of both the length of remaining life (life expectancy) and the length of remaining life one can expect to life in a healthy state (health expectancy), however defined. …