03.31.2010 09:33

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Health and life expectancy in America: How to live longer A HUGE variation in the shortening of life among different groups in the United States is revealed in a new study* led by a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, published in PLoS Medicine, looked at four preventable risk factors: smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood-glucose levels and being overweight. It then examined how these risk factors reduced life expectancy in eight population groups. Most at risk were Southern rural blacks, who had the largest reduction in life expectancy from these risk factors, with men living 6.7 years less and women 5.7 years less (or, put another way, could expect to gain those years if they were to live healthier lives). Asian Americans had their lives shortened the least, by 4.1 years for men and 3.6 years for women. This seems to be missing any attention to why there is this great disparity. I feel like this paints participation in ‘risk’ increasing behavior as a moral choice that people have full agency to choose or not choose. Obv these disparities (and even what is determined as risk behaviors or which of these behaviors are emphasized) are really structural/societal. I haven’t read the original study but I find this choice of reporting pretty lacking.

Health and life expectancy in America: How to live longer
A HUGE variation in the shortening of life among different groups in the United States is revealed in a new study* led by a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study, published in PLoS Medicine, looked at four preventable risk factors: smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood-glucose levels and being overweight. It then examined how these risk factors reduced life expectancy in eight population groups. Most at risk were Southern rural blacks, who had the largest reduction in life expectancy from these risk factors, with men living 6.7 years less and women 5.7 years less (or, put another way, could expect to gain those years if they were to live healthier lives). Asian Americans had their lives shortened the least, by 4.1 years for men and 3.6 years for women.

This seems to be missing any attention to why there is this great disparity. I feel like this paints participation in ‘risk’ increasing behavior as a moral choice that people have full agency to choose or not choose. Obv these disparities (and even what is determined as risk behaviors or which of these behaviors are emphasized) are really structural/societal. I haven’t read the original study but I find this choice of reporting pretty lacking.