Monday, March 25, 2019

Cambria County African American Life Expectancy lags behind State and US

	Cambria County	Pennsylvania	US
Overall	75.6	78.3	78.6
Caucasian	76.1	78.9	78.5
African-American	64.8	73.4	74.8
Hispanic	87.7	85.3	81.8

The new county health rankings are out for every county in the US for 2019. My County Cambria County was ranked 65th out of 67 counties in Pennsylvania in health outcomes as reported in the press. The ranking was determined by composite of length of life and quality of life measures.

I have been working on a book about Johnstown, PA by the numbers and thought I would give my readers a preview. Only looking at rankings masks the subtle nuances in the data. Two individuals can have the same IQ score but have very different abilities.

The life expectancy in the county was 75.6 years for 2016 which was 2.7 years less than the state of Pennsylvania and three years less than the US. For African Americans in the county (3.4% of the county population) it was 64.8 years which was 8.6 years lower than African Americans in the state and ten years less than the same cohort in the US. Hispanics fared better than either group in the county, state and US. They were 1.6% of the county population.

The rate of years of potential life lost in the county for African Americans was 24,443 years/100,000 in the population which was more than double that of Caucasians at 9,671 years per 100,000. For example if some one dies prematurely at age 35, then they have 40 years of potential life lost before age 75. These numbers are adjusted for population to make them comparable to other entities.

I will look at the data more in depth in my book with more updates to come.

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