How To Close The Longevity Gap In America
Hill Harper and Sandra Bruce Nichols, M.D., examine the role of health, wealth and access to opportunity in life expectancy—and what it will take to create longer, healthier lives for everyone.
What if the greatest barrier to longevity isn’t what medicine doesn’t know—but whom our systems have failed to reach?
In Washington, D.C., caught up with actor, author and advocate Hill Harper and Sandra Bruce Nichols, M.D., FAAFP, MHCDS, MS, Founder and CEO of The Samaritan Health Project, Inc., for a pivotal conversation about who gets to live longer, healthier lives in America and why. The discussion was hosted by Creating Healthier Communities (CHC), whose work is focused on addressing barriers to health and creating stronger, healthier communities.
Against the backdrop of the nation’s capital—where policy, power and public priorities converge—the conversation moved beyond the familiar language of health disparities to confront the forces beneath them: access, incentives, poverty, proximity and power.
Drawing from his deeply personal experience with cancer, generations of physicians in his family, his work in underserved communities, and his belief in the transformative power of storytelling, Harper made an urgent case for moving from intention to action—and from talking about communities to standing alongside them. At the center of the dialogue was a question with profound implications for America’s longevity movement: What good is extraordinary medical innovation if the people who need it most never experience its promise?
The discussion made another truth equally clear: Closing America’s longevity gap will require more than good intentions. It will require new incentives, unlikely partnerships, greater proximity to the communities most affected—and the collective will to turn conversation into measurable change.
