NYC to Monitor Progress on Life Expectancy Improvements
With life expectancy driven down by COVID-19 and other causes, New York City has launched a campaign called HealthyNYC, which offers a comprehensive vision for how the city can improve life expectancy and create a healthier city for all.
Life expectancy in NYC dropped from 82.6 years in 2019, its highest point ever, to 78 years in 2020. This represents the biggest and fastest drop in lifespan in a century. COVID-19 was the major driver of this decline, but parallel health crises — including overdose, suicide and violence — also contributed to the sudden decline.
Among HealthyNYC’s stated goals are to:
1. Establish an overall life expectancy goal for New York City (NYC) to exceed 83 years by 2030, achieved by measurable reductions in the primary causes of death — overall death, excess death and premature death — and health inequities in the city, defined through numerical subgoals driven by vital statistics.
2. Highlight citywide priority strategies that will have the greatest impact on reducing these drivers, with a focus on prevention.
3. Monitor the major drivers of decreased life expectancy and health inequity and progress toward goals in our city using the latest data available and a strengthened public health data system.
4. Report annually on the city’s progress toward the goals, and reestablish goals every five years, supported by an accompanying local law.
“HealthyNYC was launched as an overarching philosophy for how New York City should approach public health, beyond any administration. We’ve set out to raise the life expectancy of our city to its highest-ever level,” said Acting Health Commissioner Michelle Morse, M.D., M.P.H., in a statement. “In doing so, we’ve committed ourselves to improving the most important metric of human progress.”
HealthyNYC is a population health agenda for collective and strategic planning, alignment, action and accountability. It will be an ongoing campaign that is used, reported on and updated regularly by current and future administrations, as data change and new conditions and needs arise.
As an example of its specific targets, overdose deaths have increased more than 75% since 2019. By 2030, the goal is to reduce deaths by 25%. Here are some stated steps toward achieving that goal:
• Increase access to naloxone and quality harm-reduction services, including overdose prevention centers.
• Increase access to quality treatment and recovery services, including
medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and methadone.
• Reduce stigma and social isolation.
• Increase response services to nonfatal overdose.
• Increase access to drug testing services.
• Support federal policy and law enforcement efforts to reduce fentanyl in
the drug supply.
The overall rate of maternal mortality has remained steady in NYC since 2001, and extreme disparities persist between racial groups. From 2008 to 2012, approximately 2,300 to 3,100 people suffered a life-threatening complication during childbirth. There was a 6% increase in the maternal mortality rate among Black women from 2011 to 2020. Between 2016 and 2020, Black women were four times more likely to die from a maternal death than White women.
The HealthyNYC goal is to reduce pregnancy-associated mortality among Black women by 10% by 2030. Priority strategies to achieve the goal include:
• Increase new families’ access to health care and social support.
• Increase access to and quality of sexual and reproductive health care for people of color who may become pregnant, are pregnant or have recently given birth.
• Increase access to quality mental health and addiction support during and
after pregnancy.
• Ensure people of color who may become pregnant, are pregnant or have
recently given birth receive access to care and prevention resources for chronic and diet-related diseases.
• Improve access to and quality of obstetric health care along the whole
continuum of pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal care
In an effort to align private aims with public goals, the Health Department launched the HealthyNYC Partner initiative in June 2024. Organizations are invited to be a HealthyNYC Supporter or a HealthyNYC Champion.
While HealthyNYC Supporters primarily advance HealthyNYC through amplification, HealthyNYC Champions choose to make specific commitments related to enhancing or designing programming to best advance the HealthyNYC goals. Partners can amplify HealthyNYC through their own community engagement efforts or advance programming that contributes to the goals. In exchange, partners receive promotional materials, access to tools and resources from the Health Department and opportunities to collaborate with other partners. HealthyNYC Partners include non-governmental organizations, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, businesses, academic organizations and philanthropic organizations.
Since its launch, more than 30 institutions have joined as HealthyNYC Champions or Supporters.
Supporters include:
• Manatt
• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• Mount Sinai
Champions include:
• American Heart Association
• American Cancer Society
• Carnegie Hall
• Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
• Commonwealth Fund
• CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
• DC37
• EmblemHealth
• Greater New York Hospital Association
• Human Services Council
• InUnity Alliance
• Milken Institute
• Northeast Business Group on Health
• NYU Langone Health
• The New York Academy of Medicine
• The Rockefeller Foundation
• United Way of NYC
