https://mailchi.mp/9fd97f114e7a/the-weekly-gist-october-6-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Published this week in the Washington Post, this unsparing article packages a year of investigative reporting into a thorough accounting of why US life expectancy is undergoing a rapid decline. 

After peaking in 2014, US life expectancy has declined each subsequent year, trending far worse than peer countries. In a quarter of US counties, working-age Americans are dying at the highest rates in 40 years, reversing decades of progress. While deaths from firearms and opioids play a role, chronic diseases remain our nation’s greatest killer, erasing more than double the years of life as all overdoses, homicides, suicides, and car accidents combined.

The drivers of this trend are too numerous to list, but experts suggest targeting “the causes of the causes”, namely social factors, as the death rate gap between the rich and poor has grown almost 15x faster than the income gap since 1980. 

The Gist: This reporting is a sobering reminder of the responsibilities—and failures—borne by our nation’s healthcare system. 

The massive death toll of chronic disease in this country is not an indictment of the care Americans receive, but of the care and other resources they cannot access or afford. 

While it’s not the mandate of health systems to reduce systemic issues like poverty, there is no solution to the problem without health systems playing a key role in increasing access to care, while convening community resources in service of these larger goals.