The city's data is stark: Early deaths cost Cincinnatians, collectively, about 45,000 years of life between 2020 and 2023. Those losses — years people could have spent with families, enjoying retirement, or in the case of infants, entire lifetimes — aren't spread evenly across the city.
Health Commissioner Grant Mussman, M.D. says the gaps between Cincinnati neighborhoods when it comes to early death are among the worst in the country. That's why the Cincinnati Health Department is currently convening partners and applying for funding to accomplish an ambitious goal of narrowing the disparities 20% by 2030.
"When you break it down by neighborhood, there's actually a 25-year gap between the neighborhoods with the lowest life expectancy and the neighborhoods with the highest life expectancy," Mussman says. "More recently, it's come to our attention that's really unusual."
The health department publishes data about mortality and early death on the city's website, along with average life expectancy by neighborhood.
Cincinnati has the 14th-highest gap out of America's 500 most populous cities. Columbus has a 10-year gap between its highest and lowest neighborhood life expectancy. Cleveland's gap is 14 years.
The big disparities are the main reason the city's overall life expectancy — about 75 years old — lags behind the national average of 79.
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Mussman says the reasons for the gaps are complex, but they come from four main causes of death.
"Fifty percent of this disparity is caused by opioid overdose, infant mortality, cardiovascular disease and homicide," he says.
Addressing those issues is complex, too, and it will take research and more resources to narrow down which of the myriad social and environmental determinants of health outcomes the health department and other agencies should focus on.
“While ambitious, (the 20% reduction) is achievable if we work together to agree on common priorities and strategize together with communities to create a plan to address those," Mussman says.
Mussman says some organizations are already doing good work on these issues individually — he cites Cradle Cincinnati and its effort to reduce infant mortality — but more funding is needed.
The health department is currently applying for grants and talking with other agencies about putting together a plan. Mussman says while the goal is big, the collective payoff would be worth it.
"If we can just get to average on these conditions, we're talking about 6,000 years of life loss restored to these neighborhoods every year," he says.