Even within the US, infant mortality rates vary by almost 3x across individual States.
I consulted for an opioid surveillance program several years ago at a large scale data analytics level.
It was very sobering - basically the scientists could score each pregnancy in the state on a scale of 0-100, where 0% was <5% probability of being born addicted and 100 was >95%.
Most addicted mothers got hooked on painkillers as a result of injury or sickness. The biggest factors were access to healthcare, access to transportation, and health insurance. “Bad” zip codes were like 10x more likely to have an opioid addiction and 25x more complications.
Being a new dad at the time, it really affected my view of politics in this space. I realized that as cynical as I am, it’s not enough.
People there live, on average, 4.5 years shorter than people where I live with something like 10 fewer healthy years.
The statistics comparing people born here and there are pretty awful. Despite having the same hospital, infant mortality rate is something like 2x (although the statistical uncertainty is high).
How is this not a failure of society? In addition: I live in a country with pretty high social mobility, especially compared to the US...
I wonder how the consistent gestational period adjustments would affect the statistics for the various states.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/pregnant-women-...