Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Aetna Foundation President Writes on Turning the Clock Forward on Health Disparities, City Block by City Block
In America today, a person’s ability to lead a long, healthy life is so impacted by where they live that it’s startling. You don’t need to travel to a developing country to see communities that have been left in the last century. Stand in the lobbies of some of our largest and most celebrated hospitals and look outside, and you will see urban communities burdened by staggering mortality rates. If you ride a few subway stops or walk a few neighborhood blocks, you travel even further back in time.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), where you live has a greater impact on your life expectancy and overall health than your genetic code. For example, if you look at the neighborhoods of Boston, you will see that its Roxbury neighborhood has the lowest life expectancy — 58.9 years, according to U.S. census data. That life expectancy is shorter than in many third-world countries and is similar to how long the average American lived in the early 1920s. In New Orleans, the divide is so pronounced that a person’s life expectancy can vary as much as 25 years between neighborhoods just a few miles apart. . .