April 22, 2008
Life expectancy - It goes beyond race
From Reuters:
Smoking, obesity and high blood pressure are taking the lives of women in Appalachia, Mississippi River states and parts of Texas, a team at Harvard School of Public Health reported.
"There has been increasing disparity in health in the U.S. population for two decades," said Majid Ezzati of the school's department of population and international health, who led the study.
Overall U.S. life expectancy increased mostly because of fewer deaths from heart disease, the No. 1 cause of death, and stroke. But by the 1980s, death rates started to head back up in many counties.
"The majority of these counties were in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, and in Appalachia, extending into the southern portion of the Midwest and into Texas," Ezzati's team wrote.
While many of the worst-affected counties had a high black population, Ezzati found that white populations in poorer counties fared worse that whites elsewhere, too.
"It exists above and beyond race," he said.
The study can be found free and online at PLoS Medicine.
Posted by Staff at 08:30 AM
Category: Health; Health Disparities; Longevity; racial differences