While medical innovations and public health gains in the past century have been measurable in leaps and bounds, significant progress against acute disease has revealed an equally enormous challenge--chronic disease on an unprecendented scale. People are living longer than ever before and are increasingly facing chronic conditions that often require ongoing, expensive medical care. The toll imposed by chronic disease is high and paid in both human and economic terms. Those living with chronic disease often experience a significiant reduction in their quality of life as physical, emotional, and financial burdens take their toll. Even worse, almost half of those with a chronic condition have more than one. With chronic disease also often come functional limitations, dependency, and increased medical bills. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurological disease, and diabetes account for a hugely disproportionate share of the U.S. health care burden, and with chronic disease prevalence expected to grow at a faster rate than the population as a whole, the forecast is daunting.

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Percent of Medicare Beneficiaries Age 65+ with Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias Who Had Specified Coexisting Medical Conditions (1999) --- Bynum, Julie, Peter Rabins, Wendy Weller, Marlene Niefeld, Gerard Anderson, and Albert Wu. "The Relationship Between a Dementia Diagnosis, Chronic Illness, Medicare Expenditures, and Hospital Use". Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Vol. 52, pp. 187-194. [ Permalink ]