Epidemiologic Research on Healthy Life Expectancy and Proposal for Its Extension: A Revised English Version of Japanese in the Journal of the Japan Medical Association 2019;148(9):1781-4

Healthy life expectancy is an indicator that represents a composite of data on mortality and health status and is defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live at a certain level of health. To extend people’s healthy life expectancy, my colleague and I conducted a variety of epidemiologic research based upon community-based cohort studies and intervention trials. The findings from our prospective cohort studies included blood pressure reference values measured at home, green tea health benefit, Japanese dietary pattern, and feeling ikigai (a sense of life worth living) at daily life. Based upon these evidence, I have made some proposals toward extension of healthy life expectancy. In 2011, as the Chair of the Planning Committee for the Next National Health Promotion of Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW), I proposed that the Health Japan 21 (second term) should aim to extend healthy life expectancy to exceed the number of years extended in the total life expectancy, thus compressing the duration to be spent in an unhealthy state (compression of morbidity). In the interim evaluation of the Health Japan 21 (second term) in 2018, we were able to demonstrate that this goal is being achieved. Compared with 2010, in 2016, the increase in healthy life expectancy (1.72 years in men and 1.17 years in women) was higher than that of total life expectancy (1.43 years in men and 0.84 years in women). As a result, the duration to be spent in an unhealthy state was reduced by 0.29 years in men and by 0.33 years in women. It is important to note that Japan is the only country that has made progress in achieving compression of morbidity at the national level. We need to maintain this momentum of compressing morbidity.