‘Sullivan’s index’ also k/a ‘Disability Free Life Expectancy’ or “Active Life Expectancy”
• ‘Life expectancy’ MINUS ‘duration of disability’
• Health expectancy calculated by Sullivan’s method is the number of remaining years, at a particular age, that an individual can expect to live in a healthy state.
• The data for calculation is obtained from
o population surveys and
o life tables
• This data is often readily available.
• One set of data is from the periodic life tables and the second set is collected from survey providing prevalence of disability
• The age-specific prevalence is directly applied to the person-year of the life table: it provides
o The total number of years spent with disability,
o The total number of years lived without disability
• Advantages of the Sullivan's method
o Separate collection of mortality and disability data
o The ready availability of the data necessary for the calculation. Basic cross-sectional surveys are sufficient to collect the observed prevalence of disability.
o The Sullivan health expectancy reflects the current health of the population, adjusted for mortality levels and independent of age structure.
• Disadvantage
o The need to approximate the required period prevalence (during the year) with the observed prevalence (which is actually ‘point prevalence”) of disability.
• DFLE/ Active LE/ Sullivan's index is more relevant for elderly population
• It is important when LE as well as the proportion of old and very old people is high to know how long people can live without difficulty in activities of daily life (ADL or IADL type) and how long they can live independently without the need of someone’s help for daily living
References:
Eurostat: Statistics explained available at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Sul... retrieved on 21st Feb 2017
Park’s Textbook of Preventive & Social Medicine; ed. 23rd
Michael C. Wolfson. Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy Health Reports, Summer 1996, Vol. 8, No. 1
HALE (Health – Adjusted Life Expectancy): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/hale-health-%E2%80%93-adjusted-life-expectancy
Sullivan’s index’ or ‘Disability Free Life Expectancy’ or “Active Life Expectancy” http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/%E2%80%98sullivan%E2%80%99s-index%E2%80%99-...
QALY (Quality – adjusted life years): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/qualy-quality-%E2%80%93-adjusted-life-years
DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/disability-adjusted-life-years-daly
Differences between QUALY and DALY: http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/differences-between-qualy-and-daly
PQLI (Physical Quality of Life Index): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/physical-quality-life-index-pqli
HDI (Human Development Index): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/human-development-index-hdi