Homicide's Role in the Racial Life-Expectancy Gap

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Dhruv Khullar and Anupam B Jena, Homicide's Role in the Racial Life-Expectancy Gap; To narrow the black-white difference even more than we already have, treat violence like it's a disease. Wall Street Journal, Apr 28, 2016 (op-ed).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/homi ... ancy-gap-1461797871

Quote:

"here’s something that goes unnoticed: Disparities in health between blacks and whites in the U.S. have never been smaller. In 1970, the gap in life expectancy was 7.6 years. Whites lived 72 years on average and blacks about 64. By 2010 the gap had been cut in half. Whites lived about 79 years and blacks about 75.

"Homicide is the No. 1 cause of death for blacks between the ages of 1 and 44. Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population, but they are half or more of all homicide victims. The high homicide rate lowers the life expectancy of black men by almost a full year. In other words, homicide accounts for almost a quarter of the remaining racial gap in men—more than cancer, and more than stroke and infant mortality combined.  What has shrunk the racial gap in life expectancy is mostly that black women are living longer

"This means reframing how the medical community perceives violence. Homicide can no longer be understood only as a criminal-justice problem; it needs to be seen as a first-order health issue, a contributor to early mortality. Doctors need to think of violence as a disease, an epidemic even, that infects communities and destroys lives.

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest, for quotation above crystallize their argument.
(b) At the end of the essay is an introduction: "Dr Khullar is a resident physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Jena is an associate professor of health-care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School.