SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " ou health " 21 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Oklahoma Children’s OU Health to open northwest OKC clinic
Oklahoma Children’s OU Health will open a northwest Oklahoma City clinic Oct. 22 offering pediatric neurology and endocrinology care.
OU Health alerts patients after data breach involving former employee
OU Health has informed patients about a data breach after a former employee accessed sensitive medical records without authorization over several months.
OU Health nursing teams earn 4 workplace excellence awards
OU Health nursing teams earned four of the five Oklahoma Nurses Association Excellence in the Workplace Environment Awards for 2026.
OU renames health campus for Harold Hamm after historic $150 million gift
OU Health is now the Harold Hamm Health Campus after the University of Oklahoma received a record $150 million gift from the oil billionaire.
Is 50 the new 60?
Subscribe TL;DR: Younger generations are showing signs of worse health compared to earlier-born cohorts at the same age This backward “drift” is showing up both in mortality risk and chronic disease Worsening trends in obesity and diabetes are the most consistent signals Taking the long view, we’ve made astonishing gains in health and life expectancy in the last century. Global average life expectancy has more than doubled from 32 years in 1900 to 73 years in 2024. (But don’t forget, there were still old people when life expectancy was 32). As people lived longer, they also generally lived healthier along the way. It turns out that avoiding things that can kill you early, like malnutrition and lots of childhood infections, also keeps you healthier later in life. In a classic 2004 paper, Finch and Crimmins proposed that cohorts of children who benefited from fewer early life infections had less lifetime exposure to inflammation and cardiovascular disease later in life, accelerating mortality improvements at older ages. Poor nutrition in the womb has also been linked to a higher risk of later chronic disease. The upshot is that improvements in childhood health can pay dividends many decades later. The combination of better living conditions (nutrition, sanitation) and medical advances (antibiotics, vaccines, blood pressure meds, etc) meant that people’s healthy lifespan generally expanded, even as they lived longer. Aging researchers call this best-case scenario “compression of morbidity”—meaning we delay the onset of disease and disability even faster than the years of life we are adding. During my 20+ year research career, we could generally bank on the idea that younger generations would not only live longer but also keep getting healthier along the way. “60 is the new 50” as they say… Enter “Generational Health Drift” Sadly, this expectation of steady progress may be changing. You’ve probably heard that US life expectancy gains have slowed to a crawl in the past couple of decades. Mortality improvements are also slowing (though less dramatically) in many other high-income countries (you can read more about that in a review paper I wrote here). Mortality is a very blunt health measure, but it is often a good barometer for the broader population health trends happening underneath. And we are now seeing that younger generations may be in worse health at similar ages compared to earlier born cohorts. My collaborator Prof. George Ploubidis at University College London coined this worsening health in more recently born cohorts “generational health drift.” “Generational health drift” is bad news on multiple fronts. Most obviously, we don’t want our health progress to go backward. But the timing is also bad, since our populations are aging. In demographic terms, “population aging” means that the proportion of the population at older ages (i.e >65 years) is increasing. Fun demography fact: Current population aging is not due to the recent declines in the birth rates making the news, but declines in fertility decades ago, after the “baby boom.” As baby boomers reach older ages, the smaller cohorts behind them mean the percentage of older adults will increase. For example, the share of the population age 65 and older in the US increased from 12.4% in 2004 to 18.0% in 2024. This story of population aging was written long ago. Many worry that population aging will put pressure on health care and pension systems. But if people reach older ages in better health than in years past, those fiscal pressures would be less dire than projected. Healthy older people can also continue to contribute to society in many valuable ways, including paid work, caregiving, community service….even high political office 🤷. On the flip side, if younger generations reach retirement age in worse health and with more disabling conditions, this could magnify the societal challenge of population aging. Evidence for worsening generational health A recent paper that I LOVED in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Leah Abrams and colleagues examined which birth cohorts (aka generations) were behind worsening US mortality. Behold the Lexis diagram (cue swooning demographers). Calendar time is on the x-axis, age on the y-axis. Birth cohorts can be followed over time as they age on the diagonal lines moving up and to the right. This figure plots the year-on-year % change in all-cause mortality at a given age. Green shading indicates mortality improvements over time, white is stagnation, and gray shading indicates worsening mortality. Following the diagonal line for those born in 1950, you can see a noticeable shift from green to gray that follows this cohort for most of their lives. This gray shading shows generally worsening mortality for the 1950 to 1959 birth cohorts compared to their predecessors across all ages. Concerningly for my GenX and elder millennial peeps, there was also a deterioration in mortality for birth cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, visible as dark gray areas at ages 30 to 45 during the 2010s. While some of these mortality changes reflect specific shocks such as the opioid epidemic, most deaths still occur from major causes of death such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. For cancer, the gray in the top left corner of the figure below reflects the legacies of smoking for older cohorts, followed by a period of green with improvements in cancer mortality as smoking rates declined. But the white/gray shading in the bottom right corner highlights a stagnation and reversal of the cancer trends, with cohorts born around 1970 to 1985 experiencing worsening cancer mortality. This deterioration was most noticeable for colon cancer mortality, possibly linked to obesity or dietary factors. Not just dying more, but less healthy along the way. A recent paper by Dr. Laura Gimeno of University College London (of which I am a co-author), found evidence that more recently born cohorts in Great Britain have stagnating or worsening health. A stylized picture of what“generational health drift” might look like: The review paper found: Rates of childhood overweight and obesity were highest among Gen Z. Rates of diabetes in the 40s almost doubled from 3.1% among the Baby Boomers to 5.9% in Generation X. Gen Z reported higher rates of poor mental health in adolescence compared to earlier-born groups. These UK results are consistent with studies showing worsening health across generations in the US as well. A 2021 US study found that more recently born cohorts had worse biological markers (like blood pressure and blood sugar) than earlier generations at the same age. A separate 2022 study of Americans aged 50 and over found that more recently born generations had a higher number of chronic diseases, with younger age of disease onset. A 2024 Lancet paper found that in the US, women born in 1945 had 33% obesity prevalence at age 50, rising to 48.2% for women born in 1970 turning 50. So what’s going on, and can we turn it around? We don’t have a definitive answer for what’s causing the deteriorating health of younger cohorts, but circumstantial evidence points to worsening trends in obesity and diabetes in both the US and UK. Remember that cohort trends reflect lagged effects of early environments, and younger generations have faced both earlier onset and more severe obesity across their lifetimes. Despite these very concerning trends, the future is not set in stone. We’ve reversed poor generational health trends before: drops in smoking are a major reason cancer and heart disease deaths fell so dramatically in recent decades. GLP-1 drugs may finally turn the tide against rising rates of obesity and diabetes, though it is still early days. But things could also get worse…for example from a return to higher levels of childhood infectious diseases that can have a lasting impact on health. See for example: [ ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) [ Don’t You Forget About Me(asles): The Virus That Erases Immune Memory ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Jenn Dowd, PhD · March 24, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Even as an optimist, emerging data on the “generational health drift” has my full attention. For most of my research career, we took it for granted that each generation would be healthier than the last. But if present trends continue, **50 could be the new 60….**and Gen Z celebrities will soon look older than Paul Rudd :). Stay well, Jenn Share the Health! If you found this post useful, please share it with a friend. Share
Is social media giving you health anxiety? Here's how to combat it
LONDON - Do you ever find yourself caught in a health advice doomscrolling session on TikTok late at...
Is social media giving you health anxiety? Here's how to combat it
LONDON - Do you ever find yourself caught in a health advice doomscrolling session on TikTok late at...
The 5 Worst Foods for Liver Health, According to Dietitians
Your liver works hard to keep you healthy, but regularly eating these 5 foods adds extra stress, raising your risk of damage and disease.
OU Health’s Tulsa cancer center gets $1M gift
Founders of Doctors’ Hospital has given $1 million to support the expansion of OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center in Tulsa.
Edmond hospital employee charged with stealing fentanyl from OU Health
An Edmond hospital employee is accused of stealing fentanyl waste from OU Health, with surveillance video reportedly capturing the incident.
OU Health secures $750,000 grant for state’s first comprehensive pediatric behavioral health center
OU Health officials celebrated the grant Tuesday, which will support the project's general fund.
OU Health performs rare dual pulmonary valve procedure
Physicians at OU Health have successfully performed a rare and technically complex heart procedure that placed two artificial pulmonary valves at the same time.
Delivering Access
There was once a time when you healthcare without mentioning Honeybee Health Inc. In 2019, CNBC listed it as one of the 100 most promising startups. In
New OU Health program trains future doctors to care for people experiencing homelessness
People experiencing homelessness often face barriers to accessing healthcare. A program at the University of Oklahoma is teaching future doctors how to meet their needs.
University of Oklahoma names new radiology chair
Javier Villanueva-Meyer, MD, is slated to take on the title in September, also acting as clinical service chief of radiology at OU Health, the school’s academic hospital system.
Oklahoma City teachers to assist students at new pediatric behavioral health center
Oklahoma Children's OU Health is building a pediatric behavioral health center in Oklahoma City, where OKCPS teachers will help students stay on track academically during recovery.
MAHA says red meat will make you healthy. The American Heart Association disagrees
The American Heart Assn. is the latest medical association to issue guidelines that conflict with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA-friendly guidelines.
Person found dead inside visitor bathroom at OU Health
On Monday morning, an employee went to clean a private visitor bathroom when they found the door locked and there was no response from inside.
Can Owning a Pet Help You Live Longer?
Research suggests pets keep you healthier. But there are some caveats.
Checkup Time! How Measurement Science Keeps You Healthy
From blood transfusions to broken bones, accurate measurements are a vital part of health care.
Wellness trends worth taking into the new year (and some that aren't)
We reported on all sorts of products and practices promising to make you healthy last year. Here are the ones that stood up to science, and those that were mostly hype.