Live Long In Gotham: NYC Sets Life Expectancy Goal Of 83 By 2030

NEW YORK CITY — Life in New York City should — and could — be longer, officials said.

Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday unveiled HealthyNYC, a wide-ranging campaign to increase the city's life expectancy to 83 years by 2030.

"New Yorkers deserve to live healthier and longer lives — not just surviving, but thriving," he said.

The campaign seeks to reverse a downward trend in New Yorkers' average lifespans amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

The average life expectancy in the city stood at just shy of 83 years in 2019, before dropping to 78 in 2020, data shows.

Life expectancy has barely improved since then, and not just because of COVID, said city health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan.

Health worsened across the board for New Yorkers in recent years, and unevenly across neighborhoods and demographic groups, he said.

"Today, we are making a choice to be the healthiest big city in America," he said. "This is a campaign to take back the years stolen by COVID and all of the worsening crises like heart disease and diabetes, suicides and overdoses."

The campaign sets the following goals by 2030:

• Reduce cardiovascular disease and diabetes by 5 percent
• Reduce screenable cancers — including lung, breast, colon, cervical, and prostate cancers — by 20 percent
• Reduce overdose deaths by 25 percent
• Reduce suicide deaths by 10 percent
• Reduce homicide deaths by 30 percent
• Reduce pregnancy-associated mortality among Black women by 10 percent
• Reduce annual COVID-19 deaths by 60 percent

To do so, city officials plan to, according to the mayor's office:

• Increase access to naloxone, harm reduction programs and treatment and recovery centers to reduce overdose deaths
• Expand access to culturally responsive mental health care and social support services, including early intervention for communities of color and LGBTQIA+ youth and address the impact of social media on youth mental health and suicidal ideation to reduce suicide deaths
• Increase new families' access to quality health care and social support to reduce pregnancy-associated mortality among Black women
• Increase access to healthy foods and promoting plant-forward diets to reduce chronic and diet-related disease deaths

More information can be found here.