Our World in Data has a new Global Health Explorer. I’m going to pick a few metrics and see where the United States stands according to a somewhat random set of peer countries. I think it would be interesting to see where we stand as a percentile among OECD and non-OECD countries, but that would require work.

Peer countries: I’m going to pick six highly developed countries and six middle income countries: Canada, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia.

I’m going to pick 10 metrics.

• Life expectancy at birth: We’re #4! (Japan, Canada, Germany, US, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia)
• Child mortality: We’re #4! (Japan, Germany, Canada, US, Malaysia, Brazil, Indonesia)
• Maternal mortality: We’re #4: (Japan, Germany, Canada, US, Malaysia, Brazil, Indonesia)
• Homicide rate: We’re #6! (Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Canada, Malaysia, US, Brazil)
• Deaths from road injuries (rate): We’re #4! (Germany, Japan, Canada, US, Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia)
• Suicide rate: We’re #6! (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, US, Japan)
• Death rate from all infectious diseases: We’re #2! (Canada, United States, Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan)
• Death rate from alcohol use: We’re #5! (Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Canada, US, Brazil, Germany)
• Death rate from drug use: We’re #7! (Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Brazil, Germany, Canada, US)
• Death rate from cardiovascular disease: We’re #6! (Brazil, Malaysia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, United States, Germany)

There’s a lot more to glean from the graphs in terms of how much separates countries in these metrics, and of course there are many more metric and many more countries. But one thing is clear, USA USA! is not #1. And in this peer group of highly developed countries (Canada, Germany, Japan), we are not even average, we are dead last on most metrics. Asian countries tend to beat western countries on metrics related to life style, such as alcohol and drug use, and are significantly less violent. Germans are no saints when it comes to healthy life style – they drink a lot and have a lot of heart attacks. And Brazil is downright violent.