Published: September 05, 2008 12:45 am      

Group warns about state’s life expectancy

CHARLESTON — West Virginians face shorter lives than people elsewhere in the country because of persistent health problems, particularly women in the southern counties whose life expectancies are among the lowest nationwide.

In a news conference Thursday, West Virginians for Affordable Health Care warned that these and other findings in a new report mean the state has to move to combat obesity, tobacco use, poor nutrition and other scourges if today’s young residents are to live longer than their parents.

“This promise that we would live longer than our parents, and that our kids would live longer than us is in jeopardy,” said Perry Bryant, the group’s executive director.

The health care advocacy group based its report on data from more than 3,100 counties across the country released in April by Harvard University researchers.

According to the data, only four West Virginia counties — Pendleton, Grant, Tucker and Monongalia — have life expectancy rates above the national median of 76.5 years, a number calculated by West Virginians for Affordable Health Care from the data.

The Harvard researchers gave women nationally an average life expectancy of 79.6 years, and 74.1 for men.

Based on those numbers, the picture is grim for West Virginia, and in the southern counties most of all. The average life expectancy for men and women in McDowell County is 70.4 years, meaning only 13 counties of 3,141 have lower rates.

For women, it’s worse. Women in that county live an average of 73.5 years, making it the 10th lowest nationally. Two other counties — Mingo and Logan — were among the 20 worst for women’s life expectancy.

The data has a significant drawback, though, in that it measures life expectancy from 1961 to 1999, the last year for which good information is available.

Partially filling in those gaps are data from the state Department of Health and Human Resources, which track life expectancy by county through 2006.

Those numbers show life expectancy is actually declining in some parts of West Virginia, particularly the southern counties of Boone, Logan, McDowell, Mingo and Wyoming. In Boone and Wyoming counties, the average life expectancy dropped by more than three years between 1999 and 2006.

The group wants the state and county governments to reduce tobacco use by raising cigarette taxes and enacting comprehensive indoor smoking bans; to completely eliminate sugary soft drinks from public schools; to give tax breaks to grocers who sell fresh fruits and vegetables; and to invest in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, among other recommendations.

One of the main recommendations is that the state create a regional health department in southern West Virginia, which it says would be able to consolidate funding and other resources to better effect than county health departments acting separately.

“If they would regionalize, and we’d put more resources into public health then we’d begin to address the problem,” said Renate Pore, co-chairwoman of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition.

The state is plagued by persistent health problems resulting from obesity, smoking and other behaviors. The Trust for America’s Health reported last month that West Virginia is the second-fattest state in the country, and that it leads the nation in Type 2 diabetes.