Cunningham TJ, Croft JB, Liu Y, Lu H, Eke PI, Giles WH. Vital Signs: Racial Disparities in Age-Specific Mortality Among Blacks or African Americans — United States, 1999–2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. ePub: 2 May 2017. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6617e1.

“The death rate for African Americans dropped 25% from 1999-2015, but they are still more likely to die at a young age than white Americans.

• African Americans in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are more likely to live with or die from conditions that typically occur at older ages in whites, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
• African Americans ages 35-64 are 50 percent more likely to have high blood pressure as whites.
• African Americans ages 18 to 49 years are 2 times as likely to die from heart disease as whites.
• Social and economic conditions, such as poverty, contribute to the gap in health differences between African Americans and whites.

Public health agencies and community organizations should work across sectors, including education, business, transportation, and housing, to create social and economic conditions that promote health at early ages. Consumers can prevent disease and early death by eating healthy, maintaining a healthy weight, taking medication as prescribed, and getting screened for diseases…”

• Commentary via Urban Institute: Has the black-white disparity in death rates for older adults really disappeared?