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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers. The United States is falling behind other high-income countries when it comes to life expectancy.

A new report finds that people in the UK are living nearly three years longer than those born in the U.S., a gap that keeps widening.

The reasons may surprise you.

Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to co-host Dr. Josh Starstein, who led the report from the Bloomberg

American Health Initiative. Let's listen. Josh Scharstein, thanks for joining me. Stephanie

Desmond, great to see you. It's always nice to talk to my co-host. One of the many jobs that you

have is leading the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. And recently, you put out a new

report on life expectancy comparing the United States to England. And you found something really

interesting. So the Bloomberg American Health Initiative is this big project that we run out of the school

of public health that's focused on improving health in the United States and thinking about

some very important causes of suffering and premature death affecting so many people around the

country, from addiction to violence, and on and on.

And what we did as part of this report was ask a pretty simple question, why are Americans

dying so much earlier than people in the United Kingdom, including England?

And is there anything that we can do about it?

And what did you find? Well, we found that 40 years ago, a baby born in the United States

and a baby born in the United Kingdom had about the same life expectancy. But over time,

that's really grown. And now it's almost three years of difference,

...