The nation’s health isn’t improving. In some key measures, it’s getting worse. How is that even possible in an era of genetic medicine and other advances? And how could the AP tell that story and connect it to our customers’ own neighborhoods?
AP medical writer Mike Stobbe and data journalist Nicky Forster started with those questions and delivered a winning package that answered key questions about why American life expectancy is getting shorter while also giving AP customers a way to localize the story.
The package started with Stobbe anticipating news on his beat: Based on earlier data, he expected the CDC – in its annual mortality report at the end of the year – to find that U.S. life expectancy had declined again. The package was timed to run shortly after the CDC report came out (and was widely covered), providing a richer understanding of why American lifespans are shrinking.
To find out what was behind the numbers, Stobbe returned to West Virginia, a place he declared the unhealthiest place in America 10 years ago. (That story generated its own waves, prompting celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to stage a reality TV show there.) He interviewed more than 50 people. What he found was counterintuitive: West Virginia isn’t some strange outlier of bad health; it’s leading the rest of the country the way down. He connected with people trying to get healthier, witnessed the headwinds of the opioid crisis and explained how difficult it is to improve health en masse.
Forster, meanwhile, assembled an impressive collection of data that explained what was happening around the country in terms of life expectancy. He matched up newly released life expectancy estimates for more than 65,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. with demographic data and found striking connections between longevity and income, race and education. The data was distributed to customers, allowing them to write their own stories about what’s happening in their cities and towns. He also built an interactive that allowed readers to see life expectancy in their own neighborhood and wrote a sidebar on the AP’s findings.
Maggie Hill, 67, poses for a portrait with 10-year-old Charity in Madison, W.Va., Nov. 29, 2018. Hill adopted Charity, her granddaughter, about five years ago. Hill’s son had been raising Charity but lost custody during his ongoing struggle with drug addiction, Hill said.
AP Photo / Tyler Evert
Charity, 10, plays behind the house where she lives with her grandmother, Maggie Hill, in Madison, W.Va., Nov. 29, 2018. The pair live in a cabin that resembles a small, tidy barn in a wooded valley with a creek – a holler, as they say in West Virginia. Hill says Charity, whom she adopted five years ago, has given her life a purpose.
AP Photo / Tyler Evert
Williamson, W.Va., is seen across the Tug Fork River from Kentucky, Nov. 29, 2018. The county seat and largest municipality in Mingo County, Williamson became synonymous in the last decade with the abuse of prescription opioid painkillers. Some called the 3,000-person town “Pilliamson.”
AP Photo / Tyler Evert
The Norfolk Southern Rail yard is a reminder that coal is still king in Williamson, W.Va., Nov. 29, 2018. Williamson, the county seat and largest municipality in Mingo County with a population of about 3,000, became synonymous with the overprescription of opioid painkillers.
AP Photo / Tyler Evert
Thommy Hill stands outside the Cabell County/Huntington Health Department in Huntington, W.Va., where he works in the harm reduction program, Dec. 5, 2018. The former drug dealer has become the gatekeeper and facilitator in the program: He knows every drug user who visits and constantly tries to persuade them to try treatment – arranging immediate transportation and handing them a backpack full of clothes if they agree.
AP Photo / Tyler Evert
Empty storefronts in downtown Madison, W.Va., Nov. 29, 2018, have “for sale” signs in their windows, are boarded up, or are used as seasonal shops. The South has long had the highest obesity rates in the country, and nowhere has adult obesity been more common than in West Virginia. But future-focused projects are popping up all over the state, aimed at getting kids to embrace exercise and healthy eating.
AP Photo / Tyler Evert
The package, which included compelling images shot by freelancer Tyler Evert, won wide play, with Stobbe’s piece getting more than 140,000 views on APNews at an average engagement time of more than a minute. Newspapers around the country did their own front-page stories or used Stobbe’s piece (or both). AP's Definitive Source blog compiled examples of the localized stories.
For a deeply reported story on how one state’s problems explain why American lifespans are shrinking, and for giving AP customers the data to put the story in local context, Stobbe and Forster win the week’s Best of the States award.