People are living longer not only in developed countries but in developing countries as well. It is often thought that an increase in life expectancy signifies the improvement in the health of a nation. However, previous studies show that this is not necessarily true. Longer life expectancy may mean an expansion of the number of years spent in poor health. Quality of life, rather than just the length of life, has become an important issue for all countries today. How long can a person live in good health and without disability? How long can one remain independent and active? These are the questions now being addressed by researchers of health expectancy around the world.

The concept of health expectancy is not new and over the years, health expectancy has been gaining ground in both research and policy making. In Europe, Eurostat, run by the European Commission includes health expectancy as an indicator of population health. Within the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, the European Commission has set the target for a two-year increase in healthy life years at birth from 2010 to 2020 in the European Union. In the US, “Healthy People 2000” released by the US Department of Health and Human Services in 1990 included health life years among its target to the first time. Since then, increase in health expectancy has been their priority in “Healthy People 2010” and “Healthy People 2020”. In Japan in 2012, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released their health promotion guidelines for the next decade, and its first priority is to increase healthy life years.

In the workshop, we will introduce participants to the concept of health expectancy. The topics covered in the workshop include: the definition of health expectancy, concept of health status, measures used to compute health expectancy, and methods of computing health expectancy. We will discuss applying these measures and interpretation to the Singapore context.

This workshop will be conducted by Professor Yasuhiko Saito, from the University Research Center, Nihon University. He is a renowned academic who has been involved in activities of a research network on health expectancy called REVES over the last 25 years. Professor Saito’s profile can be found here.
 

WORKSHOP VENUE

Conference Room 4D, Level 4, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, 8 College Road, Singapore 169857
(*Take lift from Lift Lobby A and follow signage to conference room)
 

GETTING TO THE WORKSHOP VENUE

Please refer to Contact for directions to Duke-NUS.
Due to scarcity of parking spaces, we would strongly encourage all attendees to take public transport.

HOW TO REGISTER FOR THE PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP

Please register by sending an email to reves.2015@gmail.com with the subject “Registration for Pre-Conference Workshop”.
You should include the following in your email:

• Full Name
• Designation
• Primary Institutional Affiliation
• Email address
• Contact number