Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States

nejm.org

11 pointsalbertzeyer3 comments

I had no idea that the leading cause of death in children and adolescents in the United States was firearms. My assumption was that firearm deaths in the US were sensational and shocking but not a statistically significant proportion of mortality for any demographic.

Time to update my priors!

As well, it's interesting that the slope for 'Firearm-related injury' and 'Drug overdose and poisoning' look strongly similar.

And also that motor vehicle crash deaths were cut in half between ~2003 and ~2013 (eyeballed). That's a very significant development, I wonder what the specific causes were?

Improvements in car seats would be my guess. Plus, vehicles were required by law to include special latches for anchoring car seats starting around the early 2000's. It was surprisingly tricky to properly install a car seat before those latches.

Figure 10-20 years for old cars to get swapped out for new ones and we're probably at a point now where most cars are equipped with those latches.

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