Before World War Two, rural Americans actually had longer life expectancies than those in urban areas thanks to active lifestyles clean water and time spent outdoors. But that trend has reversed over time. Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, explains how and why this has shifted.

“What we’ve seen is slowly over time, while life expectancy increases in urban area, it’s steadily decreased in rural and wow, after covid, it really decreased. So it’s not unusual to see life expectancy in a rural area to be as much as 20 years less than in a suburban area.”

And why are life expectancies lower in rural areas?

“Lack of access to healthcare, first and foremost, and if you can’t get to your doctor for preventive care or a checkup, you wait until things get really bad, and then you go into the emergency room. Environmental issues, you know, for our ranchers and farmers, that’s a tough, difficult profession to be in by itself. Then you get into lifestyle choices, a lot of processed fast food, which is easy to get, and let costs less well that impacts your health. And then on top of that, you just have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer across the board.”

Leading to small towns with high health needs and the inability to seek care due to a lack of providers and or affordability factors.