New York City: the Elixir of Life

By MELANIE GOLDBERG

Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed his tips for long life at a conference at the   City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on Tuesday: keep working and move to New York, the city with the highest life expectancy in the country of 80.9 years.

“Not only are New Yorkers living longer, but our improvements continue to outpace the gains in the rest of the nation,” said Mayor Bloomberg about the release of a health department report. “Just think about that, the average person in New York City is now living 3 years longer than they did 10 years ago. So, it’s a joke, but it’s not really a joke.”

The Health Department analyzed data from death certificates and determined that the improvements included the prevention and treatment of diseases and conditions such as infant mortality, HIV, heart disease and cancer, air jordan 11 the main factors that contributed to the increase in life expectancy.The life expectancy of both men (78.1 years) and women (83.3 years) increased and are better than the nationwide averages for both sexes. The overall death rate hit an all-time low of 6.4 per 1,000 population in 2010: almost 8,000 fewer people died than in 2000.

“Our willingness to invest in health care and bold interventions is paying off,” Bloomberg added.

Since 2001, the city has invested more money in Take Care New York initiatives, allowing it to exceed expectations to reduce the infant mortality rate to 5.0 this year and also exceeded the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Healthy People 2020 infant mortality goal of 6.0 deaths per 1,000 live births. Bloomberg did note however that the city still needs to address persistent racial and ethnic disparities regarding infant mortality and that work was still needed in infant health programs such as the Nurse-Family Partnership and Newborn Home Visiting Program, both of which teach future mothers about how to keep themselves and their babies healthy as well as the benefits of breastfeeding.

“Between the decrease in infant mortality and increase in life expectancy, the future health of New Yorkers has never looked better,” said Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs.

Bloomberg also added said he believed the decrease in HIV related deaths was caused by more people being tested for the disease because of city testing initiatives in Brooklyn and the Bronx, which led to over 900,000 tests in the last five years.

Bloomberg also boasted that his anti-smoking efforts lead to a decrease in deaths from heart disease, down by 27.1 percent from 2001 to 2010, and cancer, down 6.5 percent.

“I’m a believer that if you ever stop working, if you ever slow down, you die,” Bloomberg concluded. “As long as I’m healthy I assume I’m going to want to keep living.”