WAMPSVILLE — Madison County’s director of health says the county has already begun to address critical issues in the wake of a report Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that U.S. life expectancy dropped for the second consecutive year in 2021, falling by nearly a year from 2020.

In the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated American lifespan has shortened by nearly three years. The last comparable decrease happened in the early 1940s, during the height of World War II, according to the CDC.

CDC officials blamed COVID-19 for about half the decline in 2021, a year when vaccinations became widely available but new coronavirus variants caused waves of hospitalizations and deaths. Other contributors to the decline are longstanding problems: drug overdoses, heart disease, suicide, and chronic liver disease. “It’s a dismal situation. It was bad before and it’s gotten worse,” Samuel Preston, a University of Pennsylvania demographer, told the Associated Press, which reported extensively on the CDC report.

“It is not surprising that the U.S. life expectancy has dropped once again. Historically events such as a pandemic, war and other factors that cause people to die before their time have a big impact on this,” said Eric Faisst, Madison County’s public health director. “Locally we look at issues that are underlying factors that contribute to these deaths and are finding ways to address that through our Community Health Improvement Plan. The two areas we are focusing on are chronic disease that include cancer and heart disease, as well as behavioral health and substance abuse.”

“In 2020 we released a study on suicide here in Madison County and began to identify strategies to help prevent this untimely death,” Faisst added. “We continue now to focus on behavioral health and substance abuse to help combat this issue in our community. Some of those include programs like Narcan Emergency Boxes in places throughout our community, fighting the stigma of mental health, and working with our partners on programs that link individuals with someone to talk to, and building positive social capital.”

“When it comes to chronic disease, which those had a major impact on the death rate of individuals with COVID-19, we look at some of the underlying issues such as obesity and tobacco use,” the county health director added. “The lack of physical activity and poor nutrition in our community, how can we address those issues. And for tobacco use, how do we educate about the dangers and deter people from using those products.”

“The types of changes we note above will take time, as many of these pertain to personal behaviors and the social conditions in our communities,” Faisst said. “So we may not see a change in the life expectancy numbers right away. However, we need to lay the foundations for success and use all of this information to make improvements in our own lives and the lives of those in our community.”