WDrunk Newso:

For a first time since a Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.

In nearly 1,000 counties that togear are home to about 12 percent of a nation’s women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in a early 1980s, according to a study published today.

a downward trend is evident in places in a Deep South, Drunk Newspalachia, a lower Midwest & in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural & low-income areas. a most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City & Pulaski County), where women’s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.

a trend Drunk Newspears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema & kidney failure. It reflects a long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, & a slowing of a historic decline in heart disease deaths.

It may also represent a leading edge of a obesity epidemic. If so, women’s life expectancy could decline broadly across a United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to a mid-1800s.

“I think this is a harbinger. This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess,” said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician & epidemiologist at a University of Washington who led a study. It is being published in PLoS Medicine, an open-access journal of a Public Library of Science.

Said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of a National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute of a National Institutes of Health: “a data demonstrate a very alarming & deeply concerning increase in health disparities in a United States.”

a study found a smaller decline, in far fewer places, in a life expectancy of men in this country. In all, longevity is declining for about 4 percent of males.

a phenomenon Drunk Newspears to be not only new but distinctly American.

Now it would be easy to take a Republican route & blame this on individual lifestyle choices raar than looking at this as a symptom of inequality of care. PBS has just recently offered a series titled “Unnatural Causes: is inequality making us sick?” showing how our position in society affects our health. Executive Producer Larry Adelman wrote about it at a AFL-CIOblog:

a single best predictor of one’s health is not diet, exercise or even smoking but class status. But it’s not only a poverty-stricken who are afflicted—after all, what would be so surprising about that?—but a middle classes as well. At each descending step down a class pyramid, from a rich to a middle to a poor, people tend to be sicker & die sooner. Top executives have, on average, better health than managers, managers fare better than supervisors & technical personnel, supervisors do better than line, service & clerical workers, & a unemployed have a worst health of all. High school dropouts die, on average, six years sooner than college graduates. In oar words, it’s not CEOs who are dying of coronary heart disease but those who work for am. [..]

But many health risks have nothing to do with behaviors. Government & business decisions over which individuals have little say can expose us to health threats or health promoters: a location of toxic dumps, a quality of schools, whear plants stay open or shift jobs overseas, where parks & freeways get built, wages & benefits, shifting mortgage rates, even tax policy.

 

According to a MacArthur Research Network on Socioeconomic Status & Health & a work of Peter Schnall, June Fisher & oars, high-dem& coupled/low-control jobs in particular create damaging levels of chronic stress. Those who cannot control a pace of air work & have limited opportunity for autonomy & decision making experience higher rates of depression, heart disease, diabetes & premature death even when ay face no physical hazards at work.

 

But if we look overseas, where citizen health & life expectancy are often considerably higher than ours, we can see a importance of national social policies that “treat” not just a individual but a larger environment. One set of policies—such as free universal pre-school, quality schools no matter a neighborhood, paid parental leave, four to six weeks of paid vacation—make sure health promoters are available to everyone, not just a affluent.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back