By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: May 1, 2008

Danville is one of a handful of American communities where men and women are living shorter lives.
By almost every statistical measure, Danville has problems. In our well-measured age, certain diseases and infections and trends and statistics are carefully tabulated and regularly reported. The problems those numbers represent are a challenge to the entire community. But first we have to understand that Danville’s problems are old problems.
Take population, for instance. Danville’s population was last measured by the 2000 Census, and eight years ago, the city had 48,411 residents.
Danville now has either 44,947 people or 45,385 people, depending on whether the U.S. Census Bureau or the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service is right.
But in 1960, Danville had just 46,577 residents. That means the city’s population has been stagnant for nearly 50 years. It’s an old problem that’s finally getting new attention.
Here’s another old problem: A study published by the Public Library of Science Medicine found that between 1983 and 1999, when life spans for American men and women were increasing, people in Danville were living shorter lives.
“The picture for women is largely diabetes, hypertension, obesity related and smoking related,” said Ari Friedman, the study’s co-author. “The picture for men (especially) in counties like Danville is much more driven by HIV/AIDS and homicide.”
This is a problem that’s only getting worse because of the number of local people who lost their jobs over the past few years.
“As unemployment goes up, the number of uninsured (people) increases,” said Kay Crane, chief executive officer of Piedmont Access to Health Services. “Without health care access, it does not take that long before health starts to deteriorate.”
PATHS, the Free Clinic of Danville and countless physicians and other health care professionals are on the front lines fighting this problem. But we can’t fix it with social programs alone.
The best long-term solution is raising education levels and worker skills, which helps people get better-paying jobs that offer health insurance, which leads to more preventative care and the faster, more intensive treatment of disease, which typically leads to longer, healthier lives.
Declining life expectancies are another result of the long slumber that Danville has only recently started to awaken from. If we understand how we wound up with these problems, it’s easier to get started on the solutions.