Location, location, location

How long you will live depends on a lot of factors — where you live, your race, your income. It may also depend upon how you live and to some extent, your genes.

A new report by the Harvard School of Public Health found that depending upon who you are and where you live, your longevity may be the best on record or on par with people in developing countries. Consider the stark differences between Asian-American women in Bergen County, N.J., who typically reach their 91st birthdays, and that of inner-city black men, whose average life expectancy is 70. Worse yet are the mortality rates of Native American men in parts of South Dakota, who die around age 58.

The disparities in mortality rates among what Harvard researchers referred to in the report as the "Eight Americas" are enormous and require further investigation. (For purposes of the study, Americans were lumped in eight groups according to life expectancy, risks of mortality from certain diseases, health insurance coverage and health care utilization.)

The report suggests that some of the differences may be due to socioeconomic inequalities; a lack of health care coverage; physical, behavioral and cultural barriers to health care; disparities in quality of care; neighborhood designs that encourage or discourage physical activity; and even policies that increase taxes on harmful substances such as tobacco or using pharmaceuticals to combat high blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels.

Utah ranks No. 3 nationwide for lifespan, which may be due to higher-than-average levels of physical activity, a high high-school graduation rate (which bodes well for patients understanding and following physicians' recommendations and living healthy lifestyles) and efforts intended to curb exposure to secondhand smoke and the state's clean air laws. Because Utah is not as diverse as many other states, it tends not to be affected by diseases that are more prevalent in various ethnic communities.

While there's cause to celebrate Utahns' relative longevity, there's clearly room for improvement. There are any number of things Utahns can do to improve their overall health, such as regular exercise, eating well, maintaining healthy weights, keeping up to date on immunizations, scheduling regular medical and dental checkups and following caregivers' advice.

Moreover, policy makers must do more to ensure that underserved populations in Utah — among them children, the poor, people in rural communities and Native Americans — have access to quality preventive and acute care to help even the playing fields among the "Americas."