ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1592366
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Strategies for Urban Public Health Resilience in Crisis SituationsView all 28 articles
The paradox of better population health after the pandemic: what is the cause?
Provisionally accepted
- Wroclaw University of Economics, Wrocław, Poland
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The aim of this study is to verify the hypothesis that the improvement in the subjective assessment of population health in certain European countries after the COVID-19 pandemic was driven by the mortality of the most vulnerable citizens with the worst health status.We extended the trend of the share of the oldest age group and compared it with the observed fraction, thereby identifying the "missing population."We observed a substantial deficit in the population of the oldest age group, especially in countries where people tend not to age well.The temporary improvement in population health indicators, as measured by HLY, during the pandemic in some countries was most likely an artifact resulting from the mortality of the most vulnerable individuals with poor health status. It is unlikely that this apparent improvement reflects healthier lifestyles or genuine gains in the efficiency or resilience of health systems during the pandemic. Therefore, the interpretation and use of HLY values from the COVID-19 period in Europe should be carefully reconsidered and further validated.
Keywords: Excess death, COVID -19, hly, Public Health, older people
Received: 12 Mar 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Biernacki and Ostasiewicz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marek Biernacki, marek.biernackiw@gmail.com
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