Why We Need to Treat America's Poorest Neighborhoods Like Developing Countries

"It’s no mystery about why life expectancy is low in some areas," Fleming says. "Lots of factors influence health. The striking thing is that most of these factors we’re talking about intensely cluster geographically in the same places. Places with low life expectancy are the same places that have high infant mortality rates, high rates of asthma, high rates of obesity."

They're the same places that have few healthy food options, or no sidewalks to encourage walking, or less safety at night, or even greater rates of environmental pollution. This suggests the real public health challenge, as we've written before, is as much about place as it is about people. And that means the solutions should be about place, too.