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6. Conclusion
As the health andwellness of olderArizonans is the product ofmultiple components, developing
informational resources to assist in the promotionof healthy agingofArizona?s older adultsmust
also draw from various sources. This report has taken a holistic approach to defininghealth
amongArizona?s older adults, examining the role older adults play in the composition of our
populace now and in the coming future, the demographic characteristics of our older population,
aswell asmeasures of health-related behaviors and the prevalencewith commonmorbidities and
chronic diseases. Hospital discharge datawas used to assess howArizona?s older population
utilize emergency and inpatient hospital care, and finally current patterns and recent trends in
mortalitywere provided to understand the leading causes of death inArizona?s older population.
Each of these data sourceswere analyzedwith a focus on the comingpopulation shift when
Arizona?s older adultswill come to represent a greater proportion of the population.
As population projections highlighted, older adultswill come to account for a greater proportion
of our growingpopulation in the future,makingour ability to account for the health needs of this
segment of the population evenmore critical. Arizona?s older adultswere shown to have health
behaviors similar to comparably aged adults nationally, but differed from national estimates on
some chronic diseases, specifically a lower prevalence of diabetes, a lower percentage ofwomen
with consistentmental and physical health issues, and a higher percentage ofmen reporting
beingdiagnosedwith skin cancer. Indicators of health care utilization showed that that rate of
both emergency room and inpatient visits increasedwith age, with fractures being themost
common first-listed diagnosis amongArizona?s adults age 85 and over.While frailtymaybe
somewhat inevitable as a result of the body?s biological senescencewith age, programs that
encourage seniors to participate in physical activities and tomake changes to their living
environments to reduce the risk of falls can help reduce the number of fractures among aging
adults.
Themost exceptional trend observed inmortality amongArizona?s older population is the
increasingnumber of deaths related to cognitive aging. For bothmales and females, themortality
rate forAlzheimer?s disease increasedmore than 20 percent and themortality rate for dementia
increasedmore than 40 percent from 2002 to 2012. Arizona?s older females bear the greatest
burden ofmemory-related diseases, with bothAlzheimer?s and dementia being in the top 3
causes of death for females 65 and over in 2012. Asmale longevity increases andmortality rates
from heart disease and cancers continue to decrease, it can be expected thatmaleswill come to
share increasingly in the proportion of all deaths due tomemory-related disease.
