November 21, 2023 — Men are coming up short in life expectancy. In fact, the gap in lifespan between men and women is now the widest it has been in three decades. Why? The short answer is COVID. But the truth is that it is more than just COVID. The pandemic took more lives from men because their underlying […]
August 18, 2023 — “Of the following what do you think is the number one threat to American public health at this moment?” Given a list that included guns, alcohol, cancer, COVID, obesity, opioids, smoking, driving, or something else, three top choices were clear. Opioids (chosen by 26%), obesity (23%), and guns (20%) outpaced everything else. The others were […]
July 15, 2021 — Stats are rolling in to put numbers on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year we’ve just survived (apologies to Judith Viorst). Those stats tell us just how bad things had gotten. Life expectancy dropped more than ever since the World Wars. Deaths from drug overdoses jumped by 30 percent. It was a year […]
February 19, 2021 — The lifespan expected for a baby born in America during the first half of 2020 dropped by a year, compared to what it was in 2019. But for a Black child, the drop in life expectancy (2.7 years) was more than three times worse than for a White child (0.8 years). Life expectancy for a […]
January 30, 2020 — U.S. life expectancy had been dropping for three years in a row. But new data from CDC tells us that the decline has taken a pause this year. CDC issued a pair of data briefs today that showed a pause in two troubling trends. Life expectancy ticked up slightly in 2018 after three years of […]
December 3, 2018 — The headlines are full of it. “Drug overdoses and suicides are causing American life expectancy to drop,” says the Atlantic, for example. But the real story is much more complex. Heart disease and obesity are playing a significant role, too. Big Increases, Small Numbers Without a doubt, big increases in drug overdoses and suicide are […]
January 16, 2018 — American lives have grown shorter for the second year in a row. When CDC issued these statistics in December, all the talk was about drug overdoses. That’s certainly a factor. But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points to growing obesity rates for peeling away nearly a year […]
