Southwest Va.'s Mortality Mystery

More Than Diet Behind Women's Sharp Life Expectancy Drop

RADFORD, Va. -- Esther Britt lay in an oversize casket the color of an overcast sky.

She wasn't always so heavy, but relatives say a string of illnesses and unhealthy choices pushed her weight past 350 pounds and led her here Wednesday afternoon -- lying at age 56 in Stevens Funeral Home as friends and family gathered in the red-upholstered pews. Four days earlier, her breathing had waned and her heart had failed.

"Her body was just tired, worn out," her sister Mary Britt, 54, said. "This is better for her. Hard for us, but better for her."

In this corner of southwest Virginia, cow-speckled fields and empty downtown streets tell of a slower, calmer life. It's a place where older men can be found around a table every morning drinking 25-cent coffee with the nearest Starbucks miles away. Residents will tell you little distinguishes the city of Radford and neighboring Pulaski County from elsewhere in rural America. That is what troubles health-care workers here most about a new study that found a sharp drop in life expectancy for women in the two communities.

According to the study, life expectancy for women dropped in nearly 1,000 counties but fell most in Radford and Pulaski. In 1983, life expectancy for women in the two jurisdictions was about 84 years. By 1999, it had dropped 5.8 years, to 78. No other jurisdiction in the nation had a decrease of more than 3.3 years.

Experts say they don't know why Radford and Pulaski stick out, but the study found life expectancy for women stagnant or falling in several other places in southern and southwestern Virginia.

For many who grew up and work here, the study validated what they already knew -- that women's health is faltering in part because of poor diets and smoking. Many men in the two communities face similar health troubles. Their life expectancy for the period studied fell about a year, to 72.

Local health experts said the study's findings for women are surprising.

"We do have some health challenges in southwest Virginia. But the extent that accounts for what is being reported today is a bit of a mystery to me," said Robert Parker, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Health's southwest regional office. "It's like it pops up on your grandmother's front porch and you're not sure where it came from."

He said the department is "as interested in learning more about it as anybody."

This week, the department analyzed recent data and found that, in general, female death rates for Radford and Pulaski were consistent with rates for the region and the state.

Life expectancy, one of many ways of gauging the health of a population, is an estimate of how long the average person would live if the death rates at the time of his or her birth lasted a lifetime.