A Positive Strategy for the Nation's Health

Abstract

IT IS TIME to establish a positive strategy for the nation's health. Fortunately, the last few years have brought a new momentum toward improved health, making it easier to prepare a forward thrust. For example, the total age-adjusted death rate in the nation has been dropping about 1.0% to 1.5% annually from 1920 until the 1950s. Then the decline slowed to less than one third the previous rate. Since 1970, the total age-adjusted death rate has been dropping faster again, 2.0% annually. 1 Infant mortality practically leveled out from 1955 to 1965, but in recent years it has turned steeply downward, about 4% per year (for most of the data in this paper I am indebted to the National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Md; responsibility for interpretation is mine). While the expectation of life at birth increased quite steadily from 1920 to 1955, the decade 1955 to 1965 showed