New Health Rankings: Of 17 Nations, U.S. Is Dead Last

I don't expect this to change anything. We have had similar findings for years.

Possible factors not mentioned are long hours at work, leading to not enough sleep & exercise; less vacation & sick leave than most other developed countries.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/new-health-rankings-of-17-nations-us-is-dead-last/267045/

Grace Rubenstein Jan 10 2013

We've known for years that Americans tend to be overweight and sedentary, and that our health care system, despite being the priciest in the world, produces some less-than-plum results. Health nerds who closely follow the news may even have known that we live shorter lives than people in other rich nations, and that infants in the U.S. die from various causes at far higher rates.

But a fresh report, out Wednesday, tapped vast stores of data to compare the health of affluent nations and delivered a worrisome new message: Americans' health is even worse than we thought, ranking below 16 other developed nations.

"The news is that this is across the lifespan, and regardless of income," said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who was not an author of the study.

-----

The report was prepared by a panel of doctors, epidemiologists, demographers, and other researchers charged by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine to better understand Americans' comparative health. They examined when and why people die in the U.S. and 16 other countries, including Australia, Japan, Canada, and nations in Western Europe.

-----

The results surprised even the researchers. To their alarm, they said, they found a "strikingly consistent and pervasive" pattern of poorer health at all stages of life, from infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle and old age. Compared to people in other developed nations, Americans die far more often from injuries and homicides. We suffer more deaths from alcohol and other drugs, and endure some of the worst rates of heart disease, lung disease, obesity, and diabetes.

These disproportionate deaths especially affect young people. For three decades, Americans, particularly men, have had either the lowest or near the lowest likelihood of surviving to age 50. The most powerful reasons found for that were homicide, car accidents, other kinds of accidents, non-communicable diseases, and perinatal problems like low birth weight and premature birth, which contribute to high infant mortality.

Among the most striking of the report's findings are that, among the countries studied, the U.S. has:

The highest rate of death by violence, by a stunning margin
The highest rate of death by car accident, also dramatically so
The highest chance that a child will die before age 5
The second-highest rate of death by coronary heart disease
The second-highest rate of death by lung disease
The highest teen pregnancy rate
The highest rate of women dying due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth

The report does reveal bright spots: Americans are more likely to survive cancer or stroke, and if we live to age 75 we're likely to keep on living longer than others. But these advances are dwarfed by the grave shortcomings.

-----

Yet even fit, nonsmoking Americans have higher disease rates than those elsewhere, the report said.

-----