Life expectancy in the U. S. began to decline even before the pandemic. It’s a critical barometer of our nation’s fitness and a sign that all is not well in America.
Much of the increase in preventable premature deaths is due to drug overdoses, which have increased fivefold in the past two decades. But this malaise is much broader and is largely due to chronic diseases.
Depression rates are reaching new highs. Adult obesity rates have risen from 30% to 42% since the turn of the century, and severe obesity has nearly doubled and expanded the threat of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other serious fitness problems. Sexually transmitted infections have been on the rise in the last decade. And for the first time since 1937, an infectious disease, COVID-19, has one of the top three causes of death in the country.
These fitness disorders are alarming in and of themselves. They also have a devastating effect on our economy. A one-year increase in life expectancy could increase economic output by 4%. On the other hand, as Americans’ physical fitness deteriorates, our spending on physical care continues to skyrocket. As a country, we spend $4. 5 trillion a year on fitness, which is 17% of GDP. All of this feeds into a sicker cycle of hard work and weaker economies.
Policymakers identified the connection between the economy and public fitness at the height of the pandemic, providing federal relief systems, such as cash assistance and paid leave for lack of fitness, designed to keep the nation’s workforce and economy as fit as possible. The efforts made, since COVID is relatively under control, prepare our country for the development of crises. We want to revive a historic source of aid for measures of public fitness: the business case for a fit workforce.
In 1842, Edwin Chadwick argued in his “Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Working Population of Great Britain” that investment in public health is made not only from an ethical point of view, but also from a point of view of economic productivity. Writing for the Atlantic in 1909, C. E. A. Winslow, an American pioneer in public health, wrote that employers who tried to implement social coverage measures for staff “find that it will be worth it. “And at the time, Wickliffe Rose, an American philanthropist, oversaw the Rockefeller Health Commission. Combat hookworm as a controllable health problem, boosting economic productivity.
Hookworm, which can cause anaemia and fatigue and impair children’s development, was a major problem in southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to lack of access to clean water, poor sanitation and hygiene. Blame has been placed on their symptoms, about “laziness” — a stigma linked today to symptoms of chronic illness, disability, and intellectual fitness problems — and the perpetuation of cycles of poverty. Hookworm has been virtually eliminated through school campaigns, expanded access to remedies and improved public sanitation.
Similarly, in World War II, the U. S. government invested in public fitness projects to curb malaria transmission on tropical and subtropical battlefronts; vaccinating against smallpox, typhoid and tetanus; and the control of sexually transmitted infections, which World War I cost the U. S. military more than 7 million workdays and 10,000 avoidable layoffs.
When working well, those public fitness infrastructures allow staff to lead healthy lives. The effects have been spectacular, contributing to a doubling of average human life expectancy worldwide over the past century.
Despite the impression that COVID-19 has made, public physical activity has been about much more than simply tracking epidemics – it’s about preventing disease. Access to physical care and insurance plays a role, but doctors and hospitals, at most, occasionally come into play after a user is already sick. Research shows that undeniable resources like air and water, healthy, affordable food, solid housing, and safe workplaces are far greater signs of smart fitness and longevity.
During the pandemic, systems that address critical intellectual needs—eviction freezes, expanded food assistance, and mandatory paid sick leave and family for small business workers—have boosted housing stability, slowed the spread of COVID, and intellectualized Americans. Fitness. Since then, asset affordability has plummeted; Half of U. S. contractors spend more than 30% of their income source on rent and utilities. In 2022, more than 40 million Americans lived in food-insecure households, exacerbating physical fitness disorders in adults and children.
The U. S. is one of the only high-income countries that still doesn’t have universal paid sick leave or family medical leave, forcing many other people to go to work because of poor fitness or risk wasting a day’s wages. Quality has been neglected in the office, an essential component of a fitness office valued even by the fitness reformers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Pandemic-era measures were abandoned in part because of their cost. But what costs far more, and what motivates American workers to suffer needlessly as our national health deteriorates, is our current strategy for health care. Of our $4. 5 trillion in annual health care spending in the United States, the vast majority is spent on treating others who are already sick; Only 4% try to keep other people and staff fit in the first place. This focus on treating patients who have already fallen ill is a big component of why we pay so much more than other countries, even though our fitness signs are among the best. worst in the world.
Retreating public health as an economic imperative can help expand support for the kind of interventions that have polarized the pandemic but have a long history of improving well-being and productivity.
Céline Gounder (@CelineGounder), an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, is a senior scientist and public health editor at KFF Health News. She is the host of the podcast “Epidemic”. Craig Spencer (@Craig_A_Spencer) is an emergency physician and professor of public fitness at Brown University.
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