Publication date: Jul 05, 2026
That matters for life expectancy because obesity feeds four of the ten leading causes of death: heart disease, several cancers, diabetes, and kidney disease. Life expectancy in Hawaii runs about eight years longer than in West Virginia; being born in the wrong state can cost more years than a lifetime of smoking. The problem seemed unsolvable. And yet, by 2025, overdose deaths had fallen to roughly 70,000, a drop of nearly 40 percent in two years. A death at 29 subtracts far more years from the national average than a death at 89. The national murder rate fell about 13 percent in 2023 and roughly 15 percent in 2024 at the time, the largest one-year drop on record. In 2024, age-adjusted death rates fell for all ten of the leading causes of death, heart disease and cancer included. GLP-1s like Ozempic have already pushed adult obesity down from a record 39. 9 percent in 2022 to 37 percent in 2025, the first sustained decline in a generation.
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Hawaii | American |
| Healthier | Americans |
| Pneumonia | Average |
| Soccer | Death |
| Deaths | |
| Decline | |
| Drug | |
| Expectancy | |
| Overdose | |
| Overdoses | |
| Percent | |
| Rate | |
| Record | |
| Year | |
| Years |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| pathway | KEGG | Tuberculosis |
| disease | MESH | tuberculosis |
| disease | MESH | infectious disease |
| pathway | REACTOME | Infectious disease |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Water |
| disease | MESH | pneumonia |
| disease | MESH | included |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Spinosad |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Naloxone |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Fentanyl |
| disease | MESH | cancer |
| disease | MESH | metabolic disease |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Ethanol |
| disease | MESH | drug overdoses |
| disease | MESH | death |
| disease | MESH | stroke |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Semaglutide |
| disease | MESH | weight loss |
| disease | MESH | kidney disease |
| disease | MESH | obesity |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Nonoxynol-9 |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Tropicamide |
| disease | MESH | heart attacks |
| disease | MESH | heart disease |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Pentaerythritol tetranitrate |
| disease | MESH | image |