At a meeting on the economics of aging, Jay Olshansky proposed measuring medical progress in years of independent living

At a meeting on the economics of aging, Jay Olshansky proposed measuring medical progress in years of independent living

At the H-SPAN meeting on the economics of aging on September 9, aging researcher Jay Olshansky described the later years of life, when the risk of frailty and disability rises rapidly, as the “red zone.” He proposed assessing medical progress by how many years of independent living can be preserved.

In the XX century, public health and medicine shifted most deaths from younger to older ages. Olshansky sees the next step as delaying the period when frailty, disability, and disease accumulate together with age. In his model, the “red zone” is the later part of life when the risk of these conditions rises rapidly.

In Olshansky’s model, treating an individual disease can save a person from a specific threat while leaving time for other forms of age-related damage to develop. He expressed the idea this way:

“Knock down one disease, and two emerge; knock down two, and four emerge.”

His model suggests that targeting the processes that cause damage to accumulate with age could delay the onset of several age-related conditions and reduce the years spent with frailty. Success is measured in years during which a person retains mobility, clear thinking, and the ability to live without continuous assistance.

The panel also discussed economic effects beyond medical bills: families caring for a relative with dementia lose time at work, and older people need doctors skilled in managing age-related conditions. Olshansky called for using the measures already available, including nutrition, physical activity, and living conditions. Other participants proposed assessing patients’ mobility and independence and training more specialists in older adults’ health.