Life Expectancy in Shelby County

One of the classes that I took this semester was called Health Disparities/ Race Thinking. I add/dropped the class during the first week of the semester, and didn’t really know what to expect other than that it was an Africana studies class that probably talked about health. Through the readings and the discussions in that class, I have learned more than I ever thought I would about racial disparities in healthcare, racialized medicine, the horribly racist history of gynecology (and how female slaves were the Guinea pigs for most of modern gynecological practices), negative patient-physician relations and interactions, and so much more. One of the topics that I found the most upsetting was the relation between where someone lives and how long their life expectancy is. This issue was recently highlighted in the Commercial Appeal in an article titled “Death by ZIP code: In Shelby County, life expectancy varies up to 13 years depending on where you live.” One of the claims that is presented in this article is that zip code determines health outcomes in Shelby County more than genetic code does, highlighting the important role that social factors plays on health at the individual and population level. “In North Memphis, Frayser, South Memphis and Southwest Memphis, residents live an average 69 to 71.5 years. East Memphis, Cordova, Arlington, Germantown and Collierville had rates between 79.22 and 82.59 years.” This disparity is insane! That’s nearly a 10 year difference in life expectancy between two areas in the same county. How can people that live this close to one another have such drastically different life expectancies?

One of the largest factors is access to healthcare, which is much lower in areas of predominantly low socioeconomic status (which also tend to have higher minority populations). “In 38106 and 38126, some 28 percent and 22 percent, respectively, of adults aged 18-64 had no health insurance in 2016, census figures show.” In combination with the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage, the areas of Shelby County with the lowest life expectancies also have fewer healthcare facilities, and those that do exist tend to be underfunded. Access to healthy and affordable food, jobs, public transport and housing are also issues that disproportionately affect the residents of the zip codes with the lowest life expectancies. Prior to this semester, I knew that Memphis had racial disparities in pretty much every metric, but I did not know just how bad the health disparities were.

Source: https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2018/03/12/memphis-shelby-county-life-expectancy-varies-zip-code/321264002/