WSJ.com:
Medicare data suggest that in the western U.S., blacks and whites are now equally good at controlling chronic conditions like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. We’ve made progress toward closing the racial gap for almost all causes of death, with one notable exception: homicide.
Homicide is the No. 1 cause of death for blacks between the ages of 1 and 44. Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population, but they are half or more of all homicide victims. The high homicide rate lowers the life expectancy of black men by almost a full year. In other words, homicide accounts for almost a quarter of the remaining racial gap in men—more than cancer, and more than stroke and infant mortality combined.
What has shrunk the racial gap in life expectancy is mostly that black women are living longer, primarily because they have become better at managing chronic disease. Heart disease, cancer and stroke now claim fewer years from black Americans than they used to. But the victims of violence and homicide are still disproportionately black.
Few seem to realize that this is a major source of the racial health gap. The prevailing view—at least among researchers and advocates dedicated to closing racial disparities—is that narrowing gaps will require better diabetes management, cancer screening and the like. These are certainly important. But reducing violence in black communities might shrink disparities more effectively than anything else.
This means reframing how the medical community perceives violence. Homicide can no longer be understood only as a criminal-justice problem; it needs to be seen as a first-order health issue, a contributor to early mortality. Doctors need to think of violence as a disease, an epidemic even, that infects communities and destroys lives.
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