...an online information tool.

Basic information on the health of older Americans is essential to much of the work we do in our field, but we often have a difficult time finding the most up-to-date national health data in a form we can easily use to aid in developing and running programs, doing research, teaching or grant writing.

One tool that provides up-to-date, online information on the health and well-being of older Americans is Trends in Health and Aging (THA), a data archive developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. THA is a collection of trend tables with health indicators displayed over time and by age, sex, and race/ethnicity. To access the material you log on to the free Web site at www.cdc.gov/nchs/agingact.htm and, using your mouse or touch pad, select the table or tables with the information you need, extract that data or customize the table to suit your requirements, perhaps use a bar, line or pie chart to summarize the data and then download to your computer or presentation software. The site now has nearly 100 tables on such important measures as life expectancy, death rates, the prevalence of leading chronic conditions, utilization of inpatient, outpatient, nursing home and home health care, functional status and behavioral risk factors using national and state-level data from federal collection systems.

To illustrate how you might use THA, perhaps you’re interested in obtaining information on the impact of one of a number of chronic diseases on older adults, their families and the health care system. One table in THA will provide you with trend data on mortality from the disease, another will give you the latest information on the prevalence of the illness and another table the level of hospitalizations with that disease as the primary reason. If your focus is on women or Hispanics, you can revise the tables to highlight these demographic factors; if you want specific information on a particular state, some of the tables include geographical breakdowns. You also might want to look at tables showing important risk factors such as smoking, exercise or body weight.

There are other features; users have ready access to important documentation about the source of the data and have the tools at hand to create new summary statistics, to map state-based data, or to do some statistical testing. As an additional option, the THA Web site has PowerPoint presentations on such topics as “Major trends and patterns in diabetes for older Americans,” “Major trends in medication spending by older Americans,"and “”Major trends and patterns in supplemental health insurance coverage for Medicare beneficiaries.” ( www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/aging/ppt_english.htm )

While Trends in Health and Aging is not designed to handle the informational needs of all professionals in the field of aging, it is an important example of how CDC is attempting to meet the demand for user-friendly access to high quality information on the health and well-being of aging adults.

To learn more about THA, log on to the Web site, www.cdc.gov/nchs/agingact.htm, and access the tutorials. The next live demonstration will be at the 2008 Conference of the National Council on Aging and American Society on Aging in Washington, D.C., March 26-30, 2008.