New study attributes high mortality rate of African Americans to 'long history of discrimination'

A new research study has blamed the "long history of discrimination" against the African American population across the US, rather than genetics, for the persisting higher mortality rate among them.

According to the study released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medicine Association, the Black population across the US have experienced more than 1.63 million excess deaths and more than 80 million excess years of life lost, compared with the White population over the last two decades.

“High mortality rates among Black people have less to do with genetics than with the country’s long history of discrimination, which has undermined educational, housing, and job opportunities for generations of Black people,” said Clyde Yancy, an author of the study and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study found the excess deaths further represented more than 80 million years of “potential life lost” during the years 1999 to 2020.

Excess deaths are typically defined as the “difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods,” according to the CDC. 

The study also showed that heart disease had the highest excess mortality rates, and the excess years of potential life lost rates were largest among infants and middle-aged adults.

“Differences in loss of life were most prominent among infants, with Black-White mortality and years of potential life lost rate ratios greater than 2.3 among those younger than 1 year old. Heart disease in both sexes and cancer in males were the largest drivers of differences in excess deaths.”

The excess mortality rate initially decreased from 404 to 211 excess deaths per 100,000 Black males between 1999 and 2011, then plateaued until 2019. In 2020, the rate jumped again to 395 per 100,000, the study showed.

The excess mortality rate for Black females declined from 224 to just 87 out of every 100,000 between 1999 and 2015 — then increased to 192 in 2020.

Efforts to curb the disparities have been “minimally effective,” the study reads, since the differences between the Black population and the White population worsened in 2020 due to the pandemic. In 2020, COVID-19 emerged as a leading cause of death that also took a disproportionate toll on African-Americans.

“In 2020, the highest excess age-adjusted mortality rate among Black males was for deaths due to COVID-19, whereas it was only second to heart disease among Black females. Similarly, the excess years of potential life lost due to COVID-19 was 2572 among Black males and 1759 among Black females,” the study showed.

The authors say these findings show the need to assess progress and indicate a need for new approaches to promote health equity in the US. They also called out the troubling impact of health disparities on children.

“The sobering disparity noted in this study among infants and during childhood accounted for a markedly elevated number of excess deaths and an even more pronounced disparity in years of potential life lost,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, the study notes that the number of women who die during or shortly after childbirth, for example, is higher in the US than any other developed nation, particularly among women of color.

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Racial disparities in health outcomes and death rates have been seen in a number of specific areas in prior studies.

“Excess deaths and years of potential life lost among the US Black population persist and by scale warrant national attention,” the research concluded. “With millions more lives and life-years at stake, new strategies are needed.”

The authors of the study said they wanted to highlight the urgent need of ending the crisis of premature deaths among the Black community in the US — and demonstrate that more needs to be done.

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