It has been noticed that death rates are changing in a way that worries experts. In particular, experts have looked into Arizona’s death rates, and Matthew Roach has talked about what they found when they looked into the Arizona Department of Health Services and the trends in that.
Matthew Roach said that they saw that the difference in death rates between rural and urban places was getting bigger. People have always noticed that these death rates are different, but a new study from the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture shows that the difference has grown over the last few decades.
Researchers from the USDA found that Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 who live in rural places are more likely to die of natural causes like chronic diseases than those who live in cities. The study looked at the differences in death rates over the years and found that there was a 6% difference in 1999, but by 2019 the difference had grown to 43%.
They have found that the growth in the gap is mostly due to more young women getting diseases that can be treated or avoided. People in the same age group often died of natural causes more often in cities with less than 10,000 people.
The rising death rates show that people’s health is getting worse, which is a health problem that needs to be dealt with. It’s getting harder and harder to get good medical care, especially in rural places. It was shocking to Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, but “unfortunately, not surprising.”
The study doesn’t directly link any causes, but it does say that healthcare access, cost, and quality are different in rural places compared to urban areas.
According to the report, “Regionally, differences in how States implement Medicaid expansion under the 2010 Affordable Care Act could have greater implications for uninsured rural residents in States that do not have expansions by potentially affecting how often those at risk get medical care.”