In recent years, you may have heard the phrase “the first child to live to 150 has already been born.” It is an exciting thought. Regardless of whether or not it turns out to be true, it is a fact that global average life expectancy has risendramatically over the last century. According to the World Health Organization, it increased by five years between 2000 and 2015 alone. The United States is no exception to this trend. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, between 2000 and 2014, overall life expectancy in the US increased by two years. This advance is in keeping with prior national life expectancy gains, steadily trending up. In 1900, US life expectancy was about 47 years. It is now close to 79 years. Given this increase, it seems reasonable to expect that our children will live longer lives than we will, lives characterized by significantly greater wellbeing. But is this really the case?

THE UNITED STATES spends substantially more than any other country on health. And yet, despite all this attention and money, our health, compared to the health of other comparable nations, is abysmal.

A 2013 report by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine found that among the world's 17 richest countries, we rank either 16th or 17th on nearly all core indicators of health. For example, only Denmark has a higher rate of mortality from non-communicable diseases than the U.S. Italy, Spain and Portugal all have lower mortality rates than we do, to say nothing of peer countries like the United Kingdom and Australia.

The shooter in the mass gun shooting in Orlando early Sunday morning, which killed at least 49 people and wounded dozens of others, was initially characterized as a “lone gunman.’’ But for those of us in public health, who have seen the deadly merger of access to weapons and senseless hate play out again and again, with no government action to stop it, the gunman, Omar Saddiqui Mateen, was by no means alone. He was aided and abetted by our inertia.

The shooter in the mass gun shooting in Orlando early Sunday morning, which killed at least 50 people and wounded dozens of others, was initially characterized as a “lone gunman.” But for those of us in public health, who have seen the deadly merger of access to weapons and senseless hate play out again and again, with no government action to stop it, the gunman, Omar Saddiqui Mateen, was by no means alone. He was aided and abetted by our inertia.

Earlier this month, Nature Communications published an analysis of the genetic mutation process that can lead to breast cancer. The research team looked at the genomes of cells from 560 tumors in order to pinpoint the differences between mutated cells and the cells of healthy patients. They were able to locate 93 genes that, if subject to mutation, could cause the disease. These findings have been called a “milestone,” and have added to the already considerable hype over the potential of genomics to predict disease in individuals.

Is it too much to hope that America may be nearing the point of progress over the urgent — and long overdue — issue of gun violence? More than 5,000people have been killed by guns since the start of this year. More than 10,000have been injured. There have been more than 112 mass shootings. Just this week, a murder-suicide claimed two lives on the UCLA campus. In 2013, the U.S. saw more than 30,000 gun-related deaths. There's cause to believe that 2016 will see a similarly horrifying tally.