Juanita Bland is 75 years old, disabled and lives in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. She was in her specially equipped van when the electric side door on the van became stuck open. She couldn’t get out of the van so she waved down a passing good samaritan.

The man helped her close the door and then asked for a ride. He seemed nice so she agreed and he rode with her for a few blocks before alighting and getting into a white sedan parked on the street. The man then drove off.

What Juanita didn’t know was the good samaritan she had given a lift to had just robbed a local bank branch.

“When I think back now of what could have happened, I feel blessed that I’m OK,” Bland said.

Juanita found out she was driving the getaway van when a friend called her. She had heard on the police scanner that the robber had gotten into Juanita’s van and worried that Juanita had been abducted.

The CDC has announced that the annual cost of arthritis in the US has increased to $128 billion annually in medical care and indirect expenses such as lost wages and production.

Arthritis is the nation’s leading cause of disability. Currently, 46 million Americans have arthritis and an estimated 8 million new cases will be diagnosed in the next decade. As the baby boomer generation ages, they add to the millions of arthritis sufferers in large numbers.

Arthritis is not only costly in monetary terms. Arthritis costs millions of individuals their health, physical abilities and often, their independence.

The Arthritis Foundation, the nation’s largest private, non-profit contributer to arthritis research has spent more than $380 billion since 1948 to support research into causes and cures of the many forms of arthritis.

According to data from a study by the National Insitute on Aging, chronic disability among older Americans has decreased dramatically in the last two decades. As the population ages, the health and function of older Americans is improving. Chronic disability among people 65 and older fell from 26.5 percent in 1982 to 19 percent in 2004/2005

This is good news for the ailing Medicare system as the boomer generation reaches retirement age. In addition to a drop in the rate of chronic disability, the number of Medicare enrollees over 65 who lived in long-term care facilities dropped from 1982 to 2004.

“This continuing decline in disability among older people is one of the most encouraging and important trends in the aging of the American population,” says NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.

Disability among older Americans continues significant decline

Low-income Americans age 55 to 84 are more likely to report functional limitations than those in higher income brackets. According to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, older Americans whose income falls below the poverty line are six times as likely to report limits on their physical activity.

The study was conducted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Toronto.

Reports of functional limitations differed by income in age groups 55 to 64 years, 65 to 74 years and 75 to 84 years. A functional limitation is a condition that limits one or more basic physical activities of daily living (ADLs), such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying.

“We found that a ‘gradient of disability’ exists across the full socioeconomic spectrum, as functional limitations proved inversely related to household income,” says senior author Jack M. Guralnik, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the NIA’s Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography and Biometry.

Improved understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic status and disability is critical as the U.S. population ages, Guralnik notes.

National Institute on Aging