Fascinating read. Note, the title references the partisan divide but in the first example (snipped below), the two areas are equally red - it is the states/regions that diverge politically.
Snip:
On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities. They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in 1980 — and twice voted for Donald Trump by wide margins. But when it comes to how long their residents can count on living, the parallels fall apart. Placer has a Scandinavia-like life expectancy of 82.3 years. In Lexington, the figure is 77.7, a little worse than China’s.
Key take away from this study, it is not your politics that might be killing you but it very well may be region of the country in which you live (and of course the politics of that region).
Solutions exist (beyond moving):
If you just want to move the needle on longevity in the short term, aggressive tobacco control and taxation policies are about the quickest way you can do that,” he says. “But for the long term we really have to launch our children into healthier trajectories by giving them great educational and socioeconomic opportunities and access to clean air and water and healthy foods.”