New Frontiers in Medical Statistics

{O iUR health progress, since the beginnings of the public health movement and of advance in medical science, has been epitomized in a large body of mortality data and a very fragmentary body of morbidity data. Such data, however, are not merely to be admitted as records of accomplishment; they also have other functions, undoubtedly more important. Morbidity and mortality data enable us to detect new health problems, to plan programs for their control, to gauge the progress of these programs, and finally to measure the extent of their success. A typical example of such uses of morbidity and mortality data is furnished by the recent experience with the Salk vaccine for poliomyelitis. Examples of this kind are rather common among the infectious diseases, both the acute and the chronic, which are now very largely under control in our country. Although we still have an important residue of health problems in the infectious diseases, attention has shifted rapidly to the chronic degenerative and wasting diseases typical of the older ages, but by no means entirely so. A few figures will indicate the importance of the age element in this shift. In 1900, only 22 per cent of all deaths were at ages 65 and over; this rose to 56 per cent by 1955, and may reach 62 per cent by 1975. In 1955, the cardiovascular-renal diseases and cancer jointly accounted for 70 per cent of the total deaths. Also prominent in our current mortality picture is fetal death and death in early infancy. The problem remains important because improvement at this stage of life has been very slow while our birth rate continues at a high level. These newly