Chronic Care Background
Improving a Region’s Chronic Care is Critical:
Chronic illnesses affect people of all ages, ethnicities, and incomes. They can include a child with asthma, a neighbor with depression, a friend with high blood pressure (hypertension), an elderly parent with arthritis, a co-worker with cancer or a cousin with congestive heart failure.
Caring for individuals with chronic illnesses will be the public health challenge of the 21st century.
The Human Factor
- Nearly half of all Americans (133 million in 2004) have a chronic illness.
- With our aging population, this number is expected to increase to 157 million by 2020.
- About one quarter of Americans have more than one chronic condition (i.e. diabetes and depression) and 3%, or about 9 million people, have 5 or more.
- Half of those Americans with one or more chronic illnesses (about 67 million people) are severely limited in their daily activities.
Source:
"Chronic Conditions: Making the Case for Ongoing Care," Partnership
for Solutions (Johns Hopkins University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation),
September 2004 Update.