Influences of Morbidity, Lifestyle and Functional Status on Health Risks in the U.S. Elderly Population

Igor Akushevich, Duke University
Lucy Akushevich, Duke University
Julia Kravchenko, Duke University

In this report we discuss methodological and substantive issues of the association study between hundreds of variables measured in the National Long Term Care Survey and risks of all cause mortality, morbidity, and case fatality after acute circulatory conditions extracted from Medicare Service use files. The variables are combined into fourteen groups, including daily living activities, physical activities, smoking, alcohol consumption, social activities, self-reported comorbidity, health insurance, medical providers, and others. Substantive results of these analyses consist of found associations between all considered risks and characteristics representing distinct features of human aging. Methodological results consist of evaluating and comparing several popular approaches of dealing with high dimensional categorical measurements and investigation of their power in predicting associations with the considered risks. Potentially, the developed approaches and results obtained can be applied for elaborating more individualized forecasts and more individualized prevention strategies.