Eighty-two million years—that’s how much lifetime the U.S.’s Black population lost because of premature deaths between 1999 and 2020, a new study shows.
Fragile Improvements Researchers often talk about health disparities between races as simply differences—vague phrasing that fails to communicate that such disparities should not exist, Krumholz says. Instead he and his colleagues discuss excess deaths: the number of deaths among Black people that exceed those among white people after accounting for differences in the age distribution and size of each community. Data from death certificates showed that 1.
Progress was short-lived, however. Around 2011 the gap between Black and white excess deaths stabilized. “I think it really had to do with obesity,” Harris says. In the 1970s and 1980s heavily processed foods became cheap and plentiful in the U.S. A few decades later the effects were reflected in death rates. The same socioeconomic disadvantages that led to high rates of heart disease made the Black population especially vulnerable.
From ages one to 14, Black children have only a slightly higher chance of dying than white children. But excess deaths start to increase when Black kids are in their midteens, and the numbers continue to rise through adulthood. How to Help The scale of these disparities can make them feel “insurmountable and just impossible” to fix, Cooper says. Nevertheless, she and other researchers have some ideas for how to close the health gap.
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Source: NatureMedicine - 🏆 451. / 53 Read more »