In: Nursing
What do you think can be done to reverse decreasing life expectancy in the United States due to suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism?
Drinking, drug use, obesity, isolation, and related ills are
rolling back a half-century of gains in life expectancy in the
United States—and these trends started so long ago they may be hard
to reverse, according to a sobering analysis appearing today in
JAMA.
Three straight years of declining life expectancy—from 2014 to
2017—have roots that go back to the 1980s, when “US life expectancy
began to lose pace with other countries,” say Steven H. Woolf, MD,
MPH; and Heidi Schoomaker, MAEd, both of the Center on Society and
Health at Virginia Commonwealth School of Medicine.
Breakthroughs in science, strong economies, and behaviors like eating a healthy diet, exercising, and avoiding tobacco typically raise average life expectancy.
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