Published 18 February 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b675
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b675

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Older Americans are not as healthy as older Europeans, study says

Janice Hopkins Tanne

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Among adults aged 50 to 74, Americans are less healthy than western Europeans, including the English, at almost all wealth levels, and only the richest Americans have the same level of health as their English and other European counterparts. These are some of the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Public Health (2009;99:540-8, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.139469) by authors from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts; and University College London. They found no difference by sex.

"Americans face a health disadvantage such that no matter what their wealth, their health lags behind that achieved by comparable Europeans. The disadvantage is remarkably pervasive and affects even the wealthy, but is largest for the poor," the study says.

The study looked at data from three similar surveys from 2004: the US Health and Retirement Survey; the Survey of Health, . . . [Full text of this article]


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Is this study valid ?
Alexander Spiers
bmj.com, 9 Mar 2009 [Full text]
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