Publications by authors named "Steven H Woolf"

Article Synopsis
  • The study estimates state-level excess death rates in the U.S. from 2020 to 2023, highlighting regional and partisan differences.
  • A total of 1,277,697 excess deaths were recorded, with nearly 90% attributed to COVID-19, and more than half occurred after vaccines became available.
  • Excess death rates were found to be higher in states with Republican governors and legislative bodies during specific periods of the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Mortality rates in US youth have increased in recent years. An understanding of the role of racial and ethnic disparities in these increases is lacking.

Objective: To compare all-cause and cause-specific mortality trends and rates among youth with Hispanic ethnicity and non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, and White race.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Women and children continue to miss preventive visits. Which neighborhood factors predict inadequate prenatal care (PNC) and well-child visit (WCV) attendance remain unclear.

Description: In a retrospective case-control study at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, mothers with less than 50% adherence or initiation after 5 months gestation were eligible as cases and those with ≥ 80% adherence and initiation before 5 months were eligible as controls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Policy Points The increasing political polarization of states reached new heights during the COVID-19 pandemic, when response plans differed sharply across party lines. This study found that states with Republican governors and larger Republican majorities in legislatures experienced higher death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic-and in preceding years-but these associations often lost statistical significance after adjusting for the average income and health status of state populations and for the policy orientations of the states. Future research may help clarify whether the higher death rates in these states result from policy choices or have other explanations, such as the tendency of voters with lower incomes or poorer health to elect Republican candidates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We estimated changes in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 in the United States (in the total population and separately for 5 racial/ethnic groups) and 20 high-income peer countries. For each country's total population, we decomposed the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 changes in life expectancy by age. For US populations, we also decomposed the life expectancy changes by age and number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Mortality rates for neurologic diseases are increasing in the United States, with large disparities across geographical areas and populations. Racial and ethnic populations, notably the non-Hispanic (NH) Black population, experience higher mortality rates for many causes of death, but the magnitude of the disparities for neurologic diseases is unclear. The objectives of this study were to calculate mortality rates for neurologic diseases by race and ethnicity and-to place this disparity in perspective-to estimate how many US deaths would have been averted in the past decade if the NH Black population experienced the same mortality rates as other groups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To document the evolution of the US life expectancy disadvantage and regional variation across the US states. I obtained life expectancy estimates in 2022 from the United Nations, the Human Mortality Database, and the US Mortality Database, and calculated changes in growth rates, US global position (rank), and state-level trends. Increases in US life expectancy slowed from 1950 to 1954 (0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Estimates of excess deaths in 2020-21 only begin to capture the devastating health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. More deaths will occur, and a larger number of Americans will experience disease complications as delays in accessing care and increasing socioeconomic precarity take their toll. No other high-income country experienced as high a death rate during the pandemic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic caused a large decrease in US life expectancy in 2020, but whether a similar decrease occurred in 2021 and whether the relationship between income and life expectancy intensified during the pandemic are unclear.

Objective: To measure changes in life expectancy in 2020 and 2021 and the relationship between income and life expectancy by race and ethnicity.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Retrospective ecological analysis of deaths in California in 2015 to 2021 to calculate state- and census tract-level life expectancy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Prior studies reported that US life expectancy decreased considerably in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with estimates suggesting that the decreases were much larger among Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black populations than non-Hispanic White populations. Studies based on provisional data suggested that other high-income countries did not experience the large decrease in life expectancy observed in the US; this study sought to confirm these findings according to official death counts and to broaden the pool of comparison countries.

Objective: To calculate changes in US life expectancy between 2019 and 2020 by sex, race, and ethnicity and to compare those outcomes with changes in other high-income countries.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Since the 1980s, life expectancy at birth (e0) in the United States has fallen steadily behind that of other high-income countries, widening the U.S. e0 disadvantage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To estimate changes in life expectancy in 2010-18 and during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 across population groups in the United States and to compare outcomes with peer nations.

Design: Simulations of provisional mortality data.

Setting: US and 16 other high income countries in 2010-18 and 2020, by sex, including an analysis of US outcomes by race and ethnicity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study updates an analysis of US mortality in 2020, including deaths due to COVID-19 as well as all other causes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF