The Promise of Prevention: The Effects of Four Preventable Risk Factors on National Life Expectancy and Life Expectancy Disparities by Race and County in the United States

Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Initiative for Global Health, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 3 Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 4 University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America, 5 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of AmericaGoodarz Danaei¹^,², Eric B. Rimm¹^,³, Shefali Oza², Sandeep C. Kulkarni⁴, Christopher J. L. Murray⁵, Majid Ezzati¹^,²^*

Abstract Top

Background

There has been substantial research on psychosocial and health care determinants of health disparities in the United States (US) but less on the role of modifiable risk factors. We estimated the effects of smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, and adiposity on national life expectancy and on disparities in life expectancy and disease-specific mortality among eight subgroups of the US population (the “Eight Americas”) defined on the basis of race and the location and socioeconomic characteristics of county of residence, in 2005./.../

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Monday, May 03, 2010