By Michelle Theriault Boots

Over the past 35 years, life expectancy increased more in some remote regions of Alaska than almost anywhere else in the United States, according to detailed new research published this week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

The numbers are striking: In 1980, the average life expectancy of a person born in the North Slope Borough was just 65, on par with places like Sudan and Iraq today.

By 2014, a baby born in the same region could expect to live more than a decade longer, to an average of 77 years.

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UW Professor of Global Health Ali Mokdad is quoted, and the article includes map visualizations by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.