Covering America’s life expectancy crisis

By LaVonne Roberts, Freelance Health Journalism Fellow

A panel of journalists, researchers and doctors explored the alarming crisis of premature death in America during the "Covering America's life expectancy crisis" at Health Journalism 2024 in New York City in June.

According to the Commonwealth Fund's latest research, the U.S. spends more on health care than any other high-income country, yet it has the lowest life expectancy at birth and the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases. American life expectancy has been dropping compared to peer countries in recent decades.

Derek Griffith, a professor at Georgetown University and founder of the Center for Men's Health Equity, explained that the stagnation and decline in U.S. life expectancy predate the COVID-19 pandemic. He noted that poor health outcomes, especially among men, are a major factor.

"Most of the health disparities are driven by the poor health of men," Griffith said. "And that's usually not something that raises any kind of alarm for the public health community, journalists, or pretty much anybody."

From left to right: Elana Gordon, Akilah Johnson, Derek Griffith, and William Cooke at HJ24. Photo by Zachary Linhares

Dr. William Cooke, medical director at Foundations Family Medicine in Indiana, emphasized that a zip code is often the strongest predictor of health and life expectancy.

"Right now, in a 10-mile radius of our nation's capital, life expectancy can vary by as much as 33 years," Cooke said. "These are Americans, citizens who have three decades of life less than others just based on where they live."

The panelists emphasized that while personal responsibility plays a role, social and structural factors are the primary drivers of health outcomes. Key issues include access to nutritious food, clean water, transportation, stable housing and lifelong education.

"If choice matters, we need to make the options available so [people] can make the choice," Cooke said. "If we don't make the option available to them, they can't make the choice, and it's not their fault."

Griffith added that tackling this crisis requires population-level solutions, not just individual interventions. "If you have a national-level problem, you need to have a national-level solution," he said.

The journalists on the panel advised humanizing the data through on-the-ground reporting and interviews with impacted individuals and communities. Akilah Johnson, national health reporter for the Washington Post, encouraged journalists to build relationships with researchers to contextualize the numbers.

"Ultimately, this is a people story as much as a data story," she said. "And so it helps provide some context for how and why people live their lives."

LaVonne Roberts is an award-winning journalist covering health, tech, and science. Her writing appears in The New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, TIME, CNN, and WIRED. She is the author of "Applied VR in Healthcare" and curates Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, highlighting innovative entrepreneurs in AI and other cutting-edge technologies.