Its official: Americans are dying earlier.
Preliminary signals of declining health were neither a false alarm nor a statistical fluke. A reversal of American life expectancy, a downward trend that has now been sustained for three years in a row, is a grim new reality of life in the United States.
New research establishes that after decades of living longer and longer lives, Americans are dying earlier, cut down increasingly in the prime of life by drug overdoses, suicides and diseases such as cirrhosis, liver cancer and obesity.
The ills claiming the lives of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 vary widely by geography, gender and ethnicity. But the authors of the new study suggest that the nations lifespan reversal is being driven by diseases linked to social and economic privation, a health care system with glaring gaps and blind spots, and profound psychological distress.
The twin trends an increased probability of death in midlife and a population-wide reversal of longevity set the United States in stark contrast to every other affluent country in the world. Those trends are detailed in a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In an editorial accompanying the new report, a trio of public health leaders said the studys insight into years of cumulative threats to the nations health represents a call to action.
If medical professionals and public health experts fail to forge partnerships with social, political, religious and economic leaders to reverse the current trends, the nation risks life expectancy continuing downward in future years to become a troubling new norm, wrote Harvard public health professors Dr. Howard K. Koh, John J. Park and Dr. Anand K. Parekh of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
The new research offers some new insights into a U.S. epidemic of so-called deaths of despair. Long thought to be a phenomenon limited to rural white America, the study reveals that these premature deaths have gained ground in the nations suburbs. And it suggests they are making inroads into black and brown populations, whose long history of adversity were thought to have conferred some protection from despair.
From 1959 to 2013, driven strongly by improvements in injury prevention, cancer treatments and heart health, the lifespan of the average American rose by close to a decade, from 69.9 years to 78.9 years. But in 2011, Americans lifespans stopped growing.
By 2014, this vital sign of a nations health tipped downward. That was followed by another drop in 2015 and, the new study shows, a further decline in 2016.
Looking back over close to two decades of cause-of-death statistics, the new research makes clear that the nations slide has been many years in the making. Beginning in the 1990s, Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 _ years in which good health and a low risk of death have long been a statistical good bet _ began dying at an increasing rate.
And the causes of their deaths were not random. New laws and regulations were reducing some of the leading causes of death in midlife Americans, making cars safer, reducing air pollution and occupational hazards. New medications were reducing deaths resulting from HIV/AIDS. And prevention efforts, including statin medications and a national anti-tobacco campaign, were reducing heart attack deaths among those under 64.
But other causes of death were ticking upward in young and middle-age adults.
Between 1999 and 2017, the rate of drug overdose deaths among Americans between 25 and 64 increased close to fourfold, from 6.7 per 100,000 in this age group to 32.5 per 100,000. Rates of suicide in these Americans began to rise in the early 1990s, increasing 38.3% (from 13.4 per 100,000 to 18.6 per 100,000) between 1999 and 2017.
Midlife death rates also increased for illnesses that are strongly linked to drug use and alcoholism. Between 1999 and 2017, midlife deaths from alcoholic liver disease grew 40%. Deaths from liver cancer in this age group bucked a trend of decline in virtually all cancer deaths to grow 60%. And alcohol poisoning deaths among those 25 to 64 rose almost fourfold.
