National Plates
Health Geography: The National Plate
This plate turns the atlas to health, and it does so in the atlas's own terms: outcomes, mapped, from the published federal health record, without commentary on causes the data cannot carry. The headline measure is life expectancy at birth, which recent readings from the National Center for Health Statistics place at about seventy-two to seventy-three years for Black Americans, against about seventy-eight for the total population. Around that headline sit the major outcome measures the federal surveys track — blood pressure, diabetes, infant and maternal outcomes, insurance coverage — each with its own geography, drawn here at national scale and then state by state in the State Plates section.
The regional pattern
Black life expectancy is not one number but a regional range. Readings run highest in the Northeast corridor and in parts of the West, and lowest across portions of the deep South and the industrial Midwest, where in some states the Black figure has read in the high sixties in recent releases. The state spread — on the order of six to eight years between the highest and lowest readings — is among the widest internal ranges in this atlas. Infant mortality follows a related geography, with the highest Black rates recorded in the Midwest and South and the lowest in the West and Northeast. The state health plates carry each state's own readings with the survey and vital-statistics vintages named, because health statistics are revised and restated more often than any other series this atlas uses.
The measured conditions
Among the measured conditions, hypertension is the most prevalent: federal examination surveys read elevated blood pressure in roughly fifty-five to fifty-eight percent of Black adults, the highest of any major population group the surveys publish. Diabetes prevalence reads in the low-to-mid teens percent, and obesity measures in the examination surveys read higher still. Insurance coverage — the measure nearest to a policy lever that this atlas records — expanded across the last decade and a half, and its state geography now tracks closely which states operate expanded Medicaid programs, a correspondence the state health plates make visible without editorializing it. Each condition's plate in the Thematic section gathers the state readings into one view, so a reader can compare the blood-pressure map against the life-expectancy map and see where they rhyme and where they do not.
How to read a health plate
Health statistics require the atlas's strictest reading habits. Rates are age-adjusted where the source publishes adjusted figures, because populations of different age structures cannot be compared raw; the plates state the adjustment on every table. Small populations produce unstable rates, and the state plates for the smallest Black populations carry the source's own reliability flags rather than false precision. Above all, the plates record outcomes, not explanations: they show where life runs shorter and where measured conditions concentrate, drawn from the vital statistics and examination surveys of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they leave causal argument to the literature the citations point toward. An atlas that maps outcomes honestly, at full geographic grain, has done the work its readers — researchers, journalists, policymakers — most need from it.
Health inside the atlas
Health is the section of the atlas where the state grain matters most, and the State Plates are built accordingly: each state's health plate pairs its life-expectancy reading with its infant mortality rate, its measured-condition prevalences, and its insurance coverage, all from the federal sources named on the plate. The thematic health plates gather the single measures across all fifty-one geographies, so that the diabetes map can be laid beside the hypertension map and both beside the map of coverage. The Black Belt & Regions section carries the county-level readings where the vital statistics support them, because the rural South's outcomes are the sharpest on the national map and a state average hides them. Throughout, the atlas holds its line: outcomes only, fully sourced, age-adjusted where the source adjusts, with reliability flags where populations are small. The reader who needs causes will find, in each plate's citation, the doorway to the federal literature that argues them; the atlas's contribution is the geography itself, drawn carefully enough to argue from.
A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Life expectancy at birth, Black Americans (recent CDC readings): About 72 to 73 years; Life expectancy, total U.S. population: About 78 years; Adult hypertension prevalence, Black adults (CDC survey readings): Roughly 55 to 58 percent. In the nation, each figure is published by the source named below and rounded as published; the plate's map shades the Black share of the population on the same basis, so the table and the map can be read against each other without conversion.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Life expectancy at birth, Black Americans (recent CDC readings) | About 72 to 73 years |
| Life expectancy, total U.S. population | About 78 years |
| Adult hypertension prevalence, Black adults (CDC survey readings) | Roughly 55 to 58 percent |
| Regions with the lowest Black life expectancy | Parts of the deep South and industrial Midwest |
| Regions with the highest Black life expectancy | Northeast corridor and parts of the West |
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics; CDC National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.