American life expectancy has reached an all-time high of 79 years, rebounding after the COVID pandemic.
Underlying health drivers continue to present challenges for Tennessee residents. Sycamore Institute Executive Vice President Mandy Spears said the calculation of longevity involves analyzing premature deaths across various age groups over specific timeframes.
“So life expectancy dropped as a result of premature deaths due to the COVID pandemic,” Spears said. “So the way that they calculate that is they look at everyone that passes away within different age categories in a specific time and they revisit those numbers every few years. So throughout our lives, if we’re in an age group, our age expectancy and life expectancy continues to change based on what’s happening in the world. And we saw a lot of premature deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, so that brought life expectancy down across a whole wide range of age groups.”
Spears said the state has seen numbers begin to recover as the population moves further away from the immediate effects of the virus. However, she said small declines in longevity were already occurring prior to the outbreak due to the opioid epidemic, obesity, and rising suicide rates.
“And you know, if you look at the data and you compare Tennessee to the rest of the country and really the rest of the country to the world at large, particularly other developed countries, Tennessee and the United States really has higher rates of chronic disease, maternal mortality, and epidemics like suicide and the opioid crisis,” Spears said.
These disparities are often attributed to drivers of health, which include the decision-making influences and environmental choices that determine health status. Spears said that resources available in a community often dictate these outcomes more than clinical care alone.
“So think, you know, the resources available in your community or how you’ve been taught to eat or opportunities to exercise,” Spears said. “So really these social and behavioral and environmental factors. And when it comes down to it, you know, we just struggle with those things in parts of Tennessee more than folks do in other parts of the country.”
Spears said that life expectancy varies significantly at a hyper-local level, changing drastically from one zip code to another. She said this data underscores how the culture and resources of a specific location inform policy decisions.
“So the question will really be once those things come down, you know, will we be able to manage some of the chronic disease issues that we have?” Spears said. “And that’s really going to determine kind of the future of life expectancy and the health of Tennesseans.”
Spears said recent trends show decreases in opioid overdoses and gun-related deaths as the region moves past the pandemic spikes.