Education is a health intervention

We already know that a quality education is necessary to secure gainful employment, to maintain an informed electorate and to navigate a world that is increasingly dependent on instantaneous transfers of information. Less obvious is the fact that education is linked to how long you will live, and the gaps between the highly educated and those who lack education have been widening for decades. 

In a recent brief released by a group of researchers from Washington University and Saint Louis University, it was estimated that as many as 237 of the over 3,000 deaths among African-American adults in 2011 were attributable to having less than a high school education. The researchers cite evidence that providing everyone with the education of the college-educated would save more lives than all medical advances combined. 

There are several explanations for why education and health are so closely linked. Those with higher levels of education have better paying jobs that allow them to gain access to quality health insurance and better healthcare. But the highly educated also have access to better information about how to take care of their health, access to networks and resources that help them make good health decisions, and they tend to engage in healthier lifestyles, like avoiding smoking cigarettes and eating a healthy diet. 

Of course, the reverse is also true. Children who are healthy perform better in school and are more likely to complete their education. Ailments like asthma, vision problems and hunger all interfere with the ability to learn, and increasingly mental health and behavioral problems pose serious obstacles as well. 

The African-American community has long valued education as a path towards upward mobility and equal access to the rights of citizenship. Unfortunately, too many of our children do not have access to the educational opportunities that they will need to thrive in a competitive, global economy. Not just African-American children, but children from all backgrounds in the United States lag behind other advanced, industrialized countries in basic academic skills. Significantly, we also lag behind much of the developed world in health outcomes like infant mortality and life expectancy. 

One wouldn’t assume this would be the case, given our vaunted notions of world leadership and the outsized proportion of money we spend on health care. With an increasingly diverse population that will include more and more people of color in the coming decades, the nation cannot afford to continue to provide unequal access to educational opportunities to African-American and Latino children who will be the workforce of the future. 

We have to work across sectors to ensure that every child in this region has the opportunity to obtain a quality education and, by extension, to live a long, healthy and productive life. All options should be on the table, including local, state, and federal government and the private sector. These are all our children, and the full weight of the community’s collective effort must be marshaled to change the course of the region moving forward. 

Visit www.forthesakeofall.org for more information about the Washington University and Saint Louis University research project into improving African-American health outcomes in St. Louis.