Preventable Causes Of Death
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Preventable causes of death are causes of death related to risk factors which could have been avoided. The
World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...
has traditionally classified death according to the primary type of
disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical condi ...
or
injury Injury is physiological damage to the living tissue of any organism, whether in humans, in other animals, or in plants. Injuries can be caused in many ways, including mechanically with penetration by sharp objects such as teeth or with ...
. However,
causes of death The following is a list of the causes of human deaths worldwide for different years arranged by their associated mortality rates. Some causes listed include deaths also included in more specific subordinate causes, and some causes are omitted ...
may also be classified in terms of preventable risk factors—such as
smoking Smoking is a practice in which a substance is combusted, and the resulting smoke is typically inhaled to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream of a person. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, whi ...
, unhealthy diet, sexual behavior, and reckless driving—which contribute to a number of different diseases. Such risk factors are usually not recorded directly on death certificates, although they are acknowledged in medical reports.


Worldwide

It is estimated that of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of age-related causes. In industrialized nations the proportion is much higher, reaching 90 percent. Thus, albeit indirectly,
biological aging Senescence () or biological aging is the gradual deterioration of functional characteristics in living organisms. Whole organism senescence involves an increase in death rates or a decrease in fecundity with increasing age, at least in the l ...
(senescence) is by far the leading cause of death. Whether senescence as a biological process itself can be slowed, halted, or even reversed is a subject of current scientific speculation and research.


2001 figures

Risk factors associated with the leading causes of preventable death worldwide as of the year 2001, according to researchers working with the Disease Control Priorities Network (DCPN): By contrast, the
World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...
(WHO)'
2008 statistics
list only causes of death, and not the underlying risk factors. In 2001, on average 29,000 children died of preventable causes each day (that is, about 20 deaths per minute). The authors provide the context:


Western societies

In 2017, ''
The Lancet ''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal, founded in England in 1823. It is one of the world's highest-impact academic journals and also one of the oldest medical journals still in publication. The journal publishes ...
'' published a large study by Swiss epidemiologist Silvia Stringhini and her collaborators, analysing the impact of the most important causes of preventable death in Western societies. They estimated the number of years of life lost for each risk factor at the individual level and its contribution to preventable death at the societal level (PAF = Population Attributable Fraction). The multicohort study and meta-analysis used individual-level data from 48 independent prospective cohort studies with information on socioeconomic status, high alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, current smoking, hypertension, diabetes and obesity, and mortality, for a total population of 1,751,479 from seven high-income WHO member countries. A limitation of many studies of health risk factors is
confounding In causal inference, a confounder is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Confounding is a causal concept, and as such, cannot be described in terms of correlatio ...
bias: many risk factors are interrelated and cluster together in high-risk populations. For example, low physical activity and obesity go hand in hand. People who are physically inactive tend to gain weight, and people who are severely obese have difficulty exercising. The unique advantage of the huge amount of individual data in the Stringhini study is that it allows (estimation of) the relative contribution of each separate risk factor. The folllowing table shows that, at an individual level, smoking is the single greatest risk of avoidable death, followed by diabetes and high alcohol consumption. At the population level, diabetes and high alcohol consumption have a low prevalence. Physical inactivity, smoking and low socioeconomic status (SES) are then the top three preventable causes of early death. Smoking, physical inactivity and low SES account for almost two thirds of all avoidable deaths. A puzzling finding is the small contribution of obesity as a cause of avoidable premature death. There are two reasons why obesity is not an important independent risk factor, as is often assumed. # Being overweight is a risk for early death without correcting for confounding risk factors. Overweight is usually measured by the body mass index (BMI = kg/m2), which is much easier to measure than physical activity. Most studies only measured BMI, not physical activity, and did not correct for confounding. # A major pitfall in many studies of weight and health is that "normal" and "healthy" are often confused. The
WHO The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has 6 regional offices and 15 ...
definition of "normal" adult BMI (between 18.5 and 24.9 kg/m2) is based on a normal weight and height distribution of US citizens in the 1960s, not on the associated risk of death in 2023. A meta-analysis of the association between BMI and mortality in 230 cohort studies with 3.74 million deaths among 30.3 million participants found that the risk of death in adults is not increased between 23 and 30 kg/m2 (see Figure 2). An adult BMI of 18.5 kg/m2, considered 'normal' by WHO criteria, is associated with a 30% increase in all-cause mortality. However, this is a measure of correlation, not causation, so it does not disprove previously held notions of the relationship between health and weight.


United States

The three risk factors most commonly leading to preventable death in the
population of the United States The United States is the third most populous country in the world, and the most populous in the Americas and the Western Hemisphere, with an estimated population of 340,110,988 on July 1, 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This was a ...
are
smoking Smoking is a practice in which a substance is combusted, and the resulting smoke is typically inhaled to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream of a person. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, whi ...
,
high blood pressure Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is a long-term medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevated. High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms itself. It is, however, a major ri ...
, and being
overweight Being overweight is having more body fat than is optimally healthy. Being overweight is especially common where food supplies are plentiful and lifestyles are sedentary. , excess weight reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than ...
. Pollution from fossil fuel burning kills roughly 200,000 per yea

File:Preventable causes of death.svg, alt=Leading preventable causes of death in the United States in the year 2000. Note: This data is outdated and has been significantly revised, especially for obesity-related deaths., Figure 3: Leading preventable causes of death in the United States in the year 2000. ''Note: This data is outdated and has been significantly revised, especially for obesity-related deaths.''


Accidental death

File:Causes of accidental death by age group.png, alt=Leading causes of accidental death in the United States by age group as of 2002 pdate, Figure 4: Leading causes of accidental death in the United States by age group .''National Vital Statistics Report'', Vol. 50, No. 15, September 16, 2002
as compiled at
File:Causes of accidental death by age group (percent).png, alt=Leading causes of accidental death in the United States as of 2002 pdate as a percentage of deaths in each group., Figure 5: Leading causes of accidental death in the United States , as a percentage of deaths in each group.


Annual number of deaths and causes


Among children worldwide

Various
injuries Injury is physiological damage to the living tissue of any organism, whether in humans, in other animals, or in plants. Injuries can be caused in many ways, including mechanically with penetration by sharp objects such as teeth or with b ...
are the leading cause of death in children 9–17 years of age. In 2008, the top five worldwide unintentional injuries in children were as follows:


See also

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Health effects of alcohol Alcohol (also known as ethanol) has a number of effects on health. Short-term effects of alcohol consumption include intoxication and dehydration. Long-term effects of alcohol include changes in the metabolism of the liver and brain, with inc ...
** Short-term effects of alcohol consumption **
Long-term effects of alcohol consumption The long-term effects of alcohol consumption on health are predominantly detrimental, with the severity and range of harms generally increasing with the cumulative amount of alcohol consumed over a lifetime. The extent of these effects varies depen ...
* *
List of causes of death by rate The following is a list of the causes of human deaths worldwide for different years arranged by their associated mortality rates. Some causes listed include deaths also included in more specific subordinate causes, and some causes are omitted, ...
*
Particulates Particulate matter (PM) or particulates are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspension (chemistry), suspended in the atmosphere of Earth, air. An ''aerosol'' is a mixture of particulates and air, as opposed to the particulate ...
* * *


References

{{death * Preventable causes of death Demography Prevention