Chicago has nation's largest gap in life expectancy rates between neighborhoods

CHICAGO – In the gleaming Streeterville neighborhood, Chicagoans live to be 90 years old, on average.

About 9 miles south, in Englewood, the average life expectancy plummets to about 60 years, said a new NYU School of Medicine analysis.

The 30-year gap is the largest in the country, said the researchers, who examined life expectancies in the 500 biggest U.S. cities based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2010 to 2015.

The analysis comes as hospital systems increasingly aim to keep people healthier, partly by addressing social and economic disparities.

Neighborhoods with higher life expectancies tend to have access to good health care, high educational attainment and higher income, among other things, said Dr. Marc Gourevitch, chair of the Department of Population Health at New York University medical school and chief architect of the City Health Dashboard, a public database through which researchers did their analysis.

"There's a saying that your ZIP code has as much to do with health as your genetic code, and I think it's data like this that really shine a light on a statement like that and bring it to life," Gourevitch said.

The researchers also found that cities with bigger life expectancy gaps tended to have greater racial segregation. Chicago was more segregated than most of the other cities they analyzed.

The results are similar to those of the Chicago Life Expectancy project out of DePaul University conducted several years ago. As part of that project, DePaul researchers found life expectancy in Englewood to be among the lowest in the city at 67 to 72 years, while life expectancy in the Loop and Near North was 81 to 84 years.

"It just puts into stark focus the legacy and continuing inequality in Chicago, in that neighborhoods that are less than a dozen miles apart can have such radically different prospects for an individual's life," said Euan Hague, director of DePaul's School of Public Service and a member of the advisory board to the Center for Community Health Equity. The center, directed by DePaul and Rush University leaders, also cites racism and discrimination as factors leading to geographical health inequities.

Englewood resident Asiaha Butler said she has seen the issue in her own family. Her father died of cancer and her mother-in-law died of diabetes, both before age 70. Butler is the executive director of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood.

In Englewood, neighborhood parks aren't family friendly, fresh vegetables aren't as readily available and gyms are few and far between, she said. Meanwhile liquor, cigarettes and drugs are readily available. Streeterville residents can go running in their neighborhood, while people in Englewood are afraid to do so because of violence and other issues, she said.