Georgia sees one of the highest rises in life expectancy in the nation
Georgia experienced one of the largest increases in life expectancy in the nation in 2022, rising 1.6 years, according to a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday.
Georgia residents’ life expectancy of 75.9 years still ranked near the bottom of states and the District of Columbia in 36th place, the report shows. Hawaii ranked first at 80. West Virginia was last at 72.2.
The increase happened amid a broader rise in U.S. life expectancy, reversing two years of large decreases at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Overall, life expectancy in the United States jumped by 1.1 years in 2022, reaching 77.5 years. It rose again by nearly a year in 2023, reaching 78.4 years. The CDC hasn’t released 2023 state-level data.
The federal agency mostly attributed the positive trend to fewer deaths caused by COVID-19. The infectious disease has killed more than 1.2 million people in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Nationwide, the number of people dying from the disease each week has dropped significantly since 2020, the CDC’s data shows.
Nancy Nydam Shirek, spokesperson for the Georgia Public Health Department, pointed out that more people were vaccinated against COVID-19 between 2021 and 2022 and got access to treatments, including Paxlovid, a medication for the disease.
Meanwhile, the nation’s sharp rise in drug overdose deaths began to slow between 2021 and 2022, according to the CDC. It slowed even more in 2023 and has improved substantially since.
For example, there was a 26% drop in drug overdose deaths across the country between April of last year and April of this year, from 100,049 to 73,690, giving researchers new hope. Georgia experienced a 21% decrease during the same time frame, from 2,339 to 1,847.
Dr. Justine Welsh, founder and director of Emory Healthcare Addiction Services, highlighted the funding that has flowed into Georgia from a multistate court settlement with companies that made or distributed prescription painkillers linked to the opioid epidemic. Some of that money, she noted, has helped organizations in Georgia pay for medication-assisted addiction treatment and an opioid overdose reversal medication called naloxone.
“I am really encouraged by these new statistics and the reversing trends that we are seeing,” said Welsh, who is also the medical director of the Addiction Alliance of Georgia, a partnership between Emory Healthcare and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “We have been continuing to see opioid overdose deaths decline in Georgia since 2023.”
About the Author
Jeremy Redmon is an award-winning journalist, essayist and educator with more than three decades of experience reporting for newspapers. He has written for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 2005.
