Last Friday, my 93-year-old stepmother transitioned peacefully into eternity. She had lived a joy-filled, vibrant life. The past year was challenging for her physically, and she expressed (on a regular basis) that she was ready to get her new body. God mercifully heard her prayer, and she entered her rest. Her funeral will be a celebration of her faith, her zest for living and her impact on the world (literally) through her teaching career and her participation in global missions. Her death will leave a hole for her family, but the loss will be tempered with good memories and a recognition that she was ready to make the transition.

As Nancy Krieger, Social Epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, noted in the documentary, “Unnatural Causes,”: “It’s not as if we won’t die. We all will die. But the question is: At what age? With what degree of suffering? With what degree of preventable illness?”

Good genes can extend our lives, but there are also social determinants of health–income, educational level, race, zip code, access to food, access to healthcare–that impact life expectancy. Life expectancy can be mapped. The poorer the community, the lower the life-expectancy. In Chicago, residents of Streeterville (aka the Gold Coast) have a life-expectancy of 90 while residents of Englewood (one of the city’s poorest communities) have a life expectancy of 60–a 30-year gap.

To die at age 93 isn’t tragic; it’s a milestone to be recognized and honored. But too many deaths are tragic–happening unexpectedly or prematurely. A death becomes tragic when it could have been, should have been, prevented.

If the proposed cuts to Medicaid, the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control, Cancer research on University campuses, and the Environmental Protection Agency outlined in the One Big, Beautiful Bill become law, people will die…tragically. They already are. According to a study by Boston University, an estimated 60,000 adults and children have died of AIDS around the world since USAID-supported PEPFAR programs were eliminated.

But some, like Senator Joni Ernst, seem unconcerned. “We all are going to die,” she told a crowd at a Town Hall meeting. Her statement is true, but that does NOT mean that we should minimize the tragedy of childhood death by disease or violence, nor should we coldly accept the inevitability that those without access to healthcare or medication or vaccines will die when we have the resources and knowledge to prevent those deaths.

Death may be our human destiny, but death by cutting the life-preserving programs and services that serve the poorest communities–especially poor children–shouldn’t be. We should be pursuing God’s new heaven and new earth as articulated by the prophet Isaiah where tragic death is a thing of the past. ““Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years.” (Isaiah 65:20). That is a goal worth pursuing.