It can seem easy to brush that off as another scold about eating more vegetables and getting more exercise. Beyond bad habitsĪmericans are used to hearing about how their poor diets and sedentary lifestyles make their health bad. Ten years later, here's a look back at what that eye-popping study found, and why the researchers involved believe it's not too late to turn the trends around.

American life expectancy is lower than that of Cuba, Lebanon, and Czechia. In the years since, the trends have worsened. The authors tried to sound an alarm, but found few in the public or government or private sectors were willing to listen. was stalling on health advances in the population while other countries raced ahead. The results showed – convincingly – that the U.S. health and death with other developed countries. One group of people are not surprised at all: Woolf and the other researchers involved in a landmark, 400-page study ten years ago with a name that says it all: 'Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.' The research by a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences and funded by the National Institutes of Health compared U.S. How could this happen? In a country that prides itself on scientific excellence and innovation, and spends an incredible amount of money on health care, the population keeps dying at younger and younger ages. 'Now, it's increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred at least for half a century.'Īcross the lifespan, and across every demographic group, Americans die at younger ages than their counterparts in other wealthy nations. 'This is the first time in my career that I've ever seen – it's always been declining in the United States for as long as I can remember,' says the JAMA paper's lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. Also, a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found rising mortality rates among U.S. Then, last week, more bad news: Maternal mortality in the U.S.

While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the second year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the U.S.

Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years.

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