The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. The United States also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.^[7] The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$13 trillion (over 19% of the world total based on purchasing power parity).^[4]

source: wikipedia

In 1999, the crude death rate in the United States was 877 per 100,000 population, a 14% increase from the 1998 figure of 865. Death rates increased for people 45 - 54 years and for those older than 74 years of age. Death rates for those 85 years and older increased by 2.4%, the largest rate increase of any age group. Death rates for other age groups dropped. The 5-14 year olds had the largest death rate drop with a reduction of 3.5%. The leading causes of death in 1999 were cardiovascular and neoplasms for both males and females. Males were 13% more likely to die of cancer than females primarily because more males smoked tobacco, the leading cause of lung cancer and other respiratory cancers. Males were also almost twice as likely to die in an accident, more than four times likely to commit suicide, and more than three times likely to be a victim of homicide than females.

The federal government provided the impetus for a continuation of a comprehensive health campaign called 'Healthy People'. 'Healthy People 2010', released in 1998, sets a comprehensive nationwide health promotion and disease prevention agenda for the first decade of the 21st century. Its overarching goals are to 1) increase quality and years of healthy life, and 2) eliminate health disparities. The single most important health-related event in the late nineties was the litigation against the tobacco industry that lead to the 1997 landmark agreement between attorney generals from 46 states and 5 U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. This agreement obligated the tobacco industry to pay US$368 billion in health-related damages due to tobacco use, to eliminate tobacco advertising billboards, and to retire the advertising cartoon character Joe Camel.

source: WHO