Abstract for: Modeling the Chronic Disease Burden Among the Adult Population in the United States

According to the US Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC), in 2019, 54.1 million US adults were 65 years or older, representing 16% of the population. By 2040, it is estimated that the number of older adults 65 years and older is expected to reach 80.8 million and 94.7 million by 2060 representing 25% of the US population. An aging population is characterized by the co-occurrence of more than one chronic condition, which is referred to as multimorbidity (van den Akker et al. 1998; Walker 2007; Salisbury et al. 2011; Barnett et al. 2012). Projections of chronic disease often involve cross-sectional data that fails to account for the transition of individuals across different health states –i.e., healthy, one chronic condition, and multimorbidity—by age, gender, and ADL status. Thus, this research aims to address this gap by projecting the number of adult Americans with chronic disease and ADL limitations