He Walks The Line Between Health Policy And Civic Boosterism

Outmigration and a more-educated population aside, you’re living longer because you walk more. Ooh-kay:

In essence, there is a health gap emerging between our massive metropolis and the rest of the country — some X factor that’s improving our health in subtle, everyday ways. In fact, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that once you take out those uniquely New York ways to die — AIDS, homicide, etc. — we’ve still added at least 200,000 extra years onto the city’s life-expectancy tables since 1980, making crucial advances in the same health areas the rest of the country struggles with. Like many New Yorkers, I’d moved here with some trepidation — always figuring that the stress, pollution, and 60-hour workweeks would knock about five years off my life. I was wrong — precisely wrong. But where, exactly, is our excess life coming from?

I take this question to Thomas Frieden, New York’s commissioner of public health. Frieden is a wonk’s wonk — a handsome, energetic doctor who has gained a nationwide reputation for his aggressive effort to push New York’s average-life-expectancy figure ever higher. The smoking ban of 2003? The trans-fat ban of last year? You can thank Frieden for both. These measures have already begun to lengthen life spans in the city. The smoking ban had an immediate effect: The number of deaths attributable to smoking has decreased from 8,960 in 2001 to 8,096 in 2005, a drop of 10 percent. Lung-cancer rates should begin to see the same effect a few decades from now, since it takes longer for the body to repair smoking-related lung damage.

But even Frieden admits that public policy can’t account for all the gains. When I ask what the X factor is — where the “excess life” is coming from — Frieden goes over to his desk and returns with a clear plastic statuette. It’s from the American Podiatric Medical Association and Prevention magazine: BEST WALKING CITY, 2006.

“We’ve won it a couple of years in a row,” he tells me with a grin. He’s got a bunch of them kicking around.

Just keep telling yourself that . . .