
A new study indicates that death rates are falling for the two leading causes of death, but mortality rates are up thanks to other factors.
New reports out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that there are some good news about the average American’s health, and there is also some bad news. The good news is that death rates for heart disease, cancer, and HIV are all trending downward through mid-2017 compared to the same period a year before, but the overlal mortality rate has actually increased thanks in part to a spike in drug overdose deaths.
The rate of those deaths as zoomed upward since last year, but they’re actually only partly responsible for the increase. Meanwhile, the reports show that teen pregnancy continues to go down, although preterm births have continued to increase over recent years, based ona pair of other reports that were released by the National Center for Health Statistics that took a deeper look at infant mortality and birth factors.
Infant mortality is up in terms of neonatal mortality rate, which refers to deaths of infants up to 27 days old per 1,000 live births, and postneonatal mortality rate, which refers to deaths of infants ages 28 days through 11 months per 1,000 live births. The mortality rate in 2016 was 5.87 per 1,000 births, while neonatal mortality was 3.88 and postneonatal was 2.
“Provisional estimates are based on a snapshot of all the vital statistics data received and processed by NCHS as of a specified cutoff date,” reads a statement from the CDC. “To adjust for the incompleteness of these data, individual records are weighted to independent provisional counts of all the deaths that occurred in each state by month. If the data available to NCHS for a specific state and month are less than 50% of the provisional count the data for that state and month are imputed. Provisional estimates closely match final data, but are subject to revision in future quarterly releases as additional records for that quarter are received.”
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