Briya AIRE Study Finds Midlife Health Declining, Improving in Older Adults

ByRenee Cleary

Briya, NYU and Johns Hopkins analyzed 6.4 million U.S. health survey responses, uncovering age-related health trends

New research from Briya, NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University reveals a widening gap in self-reported health between middle-aged and older Americans.

Presented at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting, the study used Briya’s AIRE artificial intelligence platform to analyze 32 years of U.S. health survey data.

Researchers examined more than 6.4 million responses from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), spanning 1993 through 2024. AIRE helped reconcile decades of changes in survey questions, data coding and collection methods, creating a unified dataset for analysis.

Key findings include:

  • Declining midlife health: The percentage of adults ages 50–54 reporting fair or poor health increased from 13.8% in 1993 to 21.6% in 2024.
  • Improvement among older adults: Among adults age 80 and older, the rate declined from 36.2% to 26.1%.
  • Similar improvement in other older groups: Adults ages 70–74 saw reported fair or poor health decline from 29.9% to 22.7%.

Researchers found that the overall health average masked these opposing trends. The findings suggest that poorer health may be emerging earlier in adulthood, while improvements are occurring among older populations.

Dr. Or Shaked, Briya’s Executive Director of Real-World Evidence and Medical Research, said the findings could have implications for public health policy, prevention strategies and clinical development.

Professor Jordan Weiss of NYU Grossman School of Medicine noted that AIRE significantly reduced the manual work required to reconcile decades of changing survey data, allowing researchers to focus more on analysis.

The research team included scientists from Briya, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

The study abstract will be published in Innovation in Aging.

About Briya

Briya develops AIRE, a scientific AI platform designed to help healthcare researchers transform fragmented clinical and healthcare data into reliable research evidence. Its platform combines secure AI, natural language processing and analytics to support research across healthcare institutions, life sciences and real-world data sources.

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