In Matthew Roach’s two years as vital statistics manager for the Arizona Department of Health Services, and 10 years previously in its epidemiology program, he has witnessed a trend in mortality rates that has rural health experts worried.
Roach’s health survey of Arizona residents revealed a widening gap between the mortality rates of rural and urban residents.
The health disparities between rural and urban Americans have long been documented, but a recent report from the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service found the chasm has grown in recent decades. USDA researchers examined the data and found rural Americans between the ages 25 and 54 died from natural causes like cancer or chronic diseases at rates that were astronomically higher than those living in urban areas. The analysis excluded external causes of deaths, such as accidental overdose or suicide.
The research analyzed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention death data from two three-year periods — 1999 through 2001 and 2017 through 2019. In rural areas, in 1999, the rate of natural cause mortality for people aged 25 to 54 was…
