COVERAGE: Next Station, A Healthier America

The other day, we hopped on the Red Line Metro to Union Station where the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation unveiled its Commission to Build a Healthier America to examine non-medical determinants of health in America. RWJF knows how to unveil a commission—reports in color, coffee in porcelain—but the take -home piece for us was a small map showing that in the 30 miles from Union Station in Washington, D.C. to the end of Red Line in Shady Grove, Md., the average life span of residents varies from 72 years to 81.3 years.

Previous | Image 1 of 1 | Next

Courtesy of the RWJF Commission to Build a Healthier America

Disparities don’t end at a Metro stop. Across America real differences in health persist along social, economic, racial and ethnic lines, as seen in the Commission’s initial report, Overcoming Obstacles to Health. Of many complex factors contributing to the disparities, a few were particularly poignant:

Education: If adults with less education experienced the lower death rates and better health status of college graduates, their potential economic gain would come close to $1.007 trillion annually. ·

Income: Affluent Americans can expect to live six years longer than poor American and two years longer than middle-class Americans. ·

Race: Nearly 21 percent of black adults and 19 percent of Hispanic adults reported poor to fair health, compared to 11 percent of white adults.

While much of the current health reform debate centers on cost, coverage and quality, it is important not to lose sight of nonmedical factors such as behavior, income, neighborhoods, education, and social interactions that influence health outcomes. As Mark McClellan, who co-chairs the commission with Alice Rivlin, stated: “To improve health—and not just health care— for all Americans, we must do a better job of improving factors outside of the medical system that affect people’s daily lives.”