HOME: Oakland Equity Indicators | Public Health | Mortality

Mortality is a widely recognized measure of population health. This Topic includes an Indicator on infant mortality, which is particularly important to public health and relates to other health outcomes, including access to care. The other two Indicators in this Topic, life expectancy and premature death, reveal disparities in how long individuals are expected to live and whether they are able to meet those expectations. In all three Indicators, African Americans have the worst outcomes.

Mortality was the highest-scoring Topic in the Public Health Theme (42.0), but overall, African Americans are twice as likely to have negative mortality outcomes as other racial and ethnic groups. The infant mortality Indicator received the lowest score in the Topic (16), which means this Indicator had the greatest disparity. Life expectancy had the highest score in the Topic (77), but the premature death Indicator had a score of 33.

African Americans had an infant mortality rate of 11.7 per 1,000 live births, whereas Whites had an infant mortality rate of 1.9 per 1,000. The infant mortality rate for Latinos (4.7 per 1,000) and Asians (3.1 per 1,000) fell below the citywide rate (5.1 per 1,000). The African American infant mortality rate was 6.16 higher than the rate for Whites.

African Americans had the lowest life expectancy at 73.0 years, while Asians had the highest life expectancy at 85.9 years. Latinos had the second highest life expectancy (83.3 years), and the life expectancy for White was 81.6 years. Oaklanders overall had a life expectancy of 80.0. The life expectancy for Asians was 1.18 times higher than the life expectancy for African Americans; Asians can expect to live more than a decade longer than African Americans.

Oakland as a whole had an age-adjusted years of lives lost (YLL) rate of 15,479.7 per 100,000 people. Asians had the lowest age-adjusted YLL rate at 8,527.9 per 100,000 people. African Americans had the highest age-adjusted YLL rate at 26,889.6 per 100,000. The YLL rate for Latinos (11,940.9 per 100,000) and Whites (12,592.9 per 100,000) were both lower than the citywide rate (15,479.7 per 100,000). The African American YLL rate was 3.15 times greater than that of Asians.