A new study of 20 of the world’s richest countries found it’s dangerous to be born into the United States.
The U.S. ranks last in child health outcomes compared to 19 other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations with similar levels of economic development and political structures, including Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, according to the study published in Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed health care journal.
In fact, a child born in the U.S. is 76 percent more likely to die before their first birthday than infants born in other wealthy countries, and children who survive infancy have a 57 percent greater risk of death before reaching adulthood. The findings — based on a 50-year time-trend analysis from 1960 to 2010 — come despite America’s greater per capita spending on health care for children, the study notes.
“Every child should have the chance to live a full, healthy and safe life. This study shows that we are not living up to that promise and that we have fallen short of that promise for the last three decades,” says lead author Ashish Thakrar, an internal medicine resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Compared to these 19 similar countries, we are an outlier: This is the most dangerous of wealthy, democratic countries to be born into.”
The U.S. kept pace with child mortality rates in its peer nations in the 1960s, but researchers found that changed just a decade later. By the 1970s, U.S. mortality rates were noticeably higher for Americans ages 1 through 19 and by the 1980s, U.S. children under a year were also showing greater rates of mortality.
The shift was stark. Researchers say if the U.S. had achieved just the average childhood mortality rate of the other countries over the study period, more than 600,000 deaths could have been avoided.
In the U.S., Southern states hold some of the highest infant mortality rates, with Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana among the five worst states for infant mortality, according to 2017 U.S. News Best States data.
Thakrar and his team suggest America’s higher mortality rates are linked to its “persistently high poverty rates, poor educational outcomes, and a relatively weak social safety net.”
“There won’t be a quick fix for these disparities, but that is also no excuse for complacency,” Thakrar says.
The key takeaway from the study, Thakrar says, is that there are preventable deaths and that key players must think past medical care to address issues within American society. The U.S. does not have room to fall behind.
The study comes just months after Congress missed its deadline to refund the Children’s Health Insurance Program, allowing the program that provides insurance to some 8.9 million low income children to expire. States are expected to exhaust their federal CHIP funds by as early as the end of the month.
What’s more, the average life expectancy in the U.S. continued to drop for the second year in a row in 2016 as the ongoing opioid epidemic ravaged the nation — a trend that hadn’t been seen since the 1960s. And the U.S. has had one of the highest rates of child poverty among its wealthy counterparts since the 1980s.
The study’s authors suggest U.S. policy should strongly push reforms for infants that address deaths immediately before and after birth and for children between the ages of 15 and 19 related to automobile accidents and assaults by firearm. From 2001 to 2010, the study found, children ages 15 to 19 were 82 times more likely to die from gun homicide in the U.S.
The study contends that all U.S. policymakers, pediatric health professionals, child health advocates and families “should be troubled” by the findings.
“The care of children is a basic moral responsibility of our society,” the report says.
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U.S. Has Highest Child Mortality Rate of 20 Rich Countries originally appeared on usnews.com
