Growing gap in U.S. premature deaths along party lines underscores collision of politics, public health: article

NEW YORK, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Recent events in the United States, such as the Supreme Court's impending repeal of Roe v. Wade, the spike in gun violence across the country, and the stark partisan divide on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are putting public health on a collision course with politics, said an article published on the STAT website on Tuesday.

"Although this may seem like a new phenomenon, American politics has been creating a deep fissure in the health of Americans over the past two decades," said the article on the American health-oriented news website.

Based on the data from 2001 to 2019, people in U.S. counties that voted for Republican presidential candidates were more likely to die prematurely than those in counties that voted for Democratic candidates, and the gap has grown sixfold over the last two decades, according to the article.

"We found similar results when we looked only at counties that voted for one party's candidate throughout that period, as well as when we used state election data for governors," it said.

As death rates in Democratic counties declined 22 percent between 2001 to 2019, Republican counties saw only an 11 percent decline, with almost no improvement since 2008, it added.