BACKGROUND The United States health care debate has focused on the nation's uniquely high rates of lack of insurance and poor health outcomes relative to other high-income countries. Large disparities in health outcomes are well-documented in the US, but the most recent assessment of county disparities in mortality is from 1999. It is critical to tracking progress of health reform legislation t...

The life table entropy provides useful information for understanding improvements in mortality and survival in a population. In this paper we take a closer look at the life table entropy and use advanced mathematical methods to provide additional insights for understanding how it relates to changes in mortality and survival. By studying the entropy (H) as a functional, we show that changes in t...

The rapid increase in human longevity has raised important questions about what implications this development may have for the variability of age at death. Earlier studies have reported evidence of a historical trend towards mortality compression. However, the period life table model, commonly used to address mortality compression, produces an artificially compressed picture of mortality as a b...

AIMS To develop tables that report the life expectancy associated with levels of major modifiable risk factors for patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS AND RESULTS A set of tables reporting life-expectancy stratified by age-sex groups for combinations of modifiable risk was constructed based on predictions from the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS) Outcomes Model. This model...