By John Inscore Essick
Port Royal Baptist Church
The average lifespan for Americans has been going up since the 1960s.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic caused a brief drop in life expectancy in 1993, but the average age began to rise again as we learned how to help those with HIV/AIDS live longer with the virus.
Similarly, public health researchers suggest that the recent spike in opioid overdoses is also lowering life expectancy projections in the United States.