CDC: Thousands of premature deaths in US are preventable.

USA Today (5/2, Weintraub) reports, “There is a huge range in the death rates across American states, driven by public policy, regional habits and socioeconomics, Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said” yesterday. Researchpublished in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that “the death rate from the five major causes varies at least twofold between the healthiest states – such as Colorado, Utah and Vermont – and the least healthy, most of which are found in the Southeast, Frieden said.” The majority of the differences “can be explained by differences in smoking habits, obesity, lack of exercise, poor diet, drug and alcohol abuse and access to medications – all of which can be modified with better habits and policies, Frieden said.”

        On its website, CBS News (5/2, Firger) reports that investigators “reviewed state to state data on death records between 2008 and 2010 of people younger than age 80.” The researchers “then calculated premature death rates that could have been prevented if all states had the same number of deaths as states with the lowest rates for each cause.”

        The Washington Post (5/2) “GovBeat” blog reports that across the US, approximately “one in three deaths from heart or cerebrovascular (stroke) disease could have been prevented, while the same was true for just over one in five cancer deaths.” The data indicated that almost “two in five deaths from unintentional injuries and chronic lower respiratory diseases could have been prevented.”

        The Los Angeles Times (5/2, Kaplan) “Science Now” blog offers the numbers, reporting that the researchers “found that 91,757 Americans die unnecessarily of heart disease each year.” An additional “84,443 die prematurely of cancer, 28,831 die early because of chronic lower respiratory diseases, 16,973 are killed by preventable strokes, and 36,836 die as a result of unnecessary accidents.”

        TIME (5/2, Park) reports on its website that “the eight states with the highest death rates from each of the top five causes included Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.”

        The Hill (5/2, Al-Faruque) reports that although “individual lifestyle changes can improve life expectancy, Frieden emphasized government programs such as the CDC’s Million Hearts campaign to improve access to healthier living, and said heart screening can greatly reduce mortality rates.” Additionally, Frieden “said the Affordable Care Act will help people get screened and treated for diseases earlier.”

        In a piece for CNN (5/2), Dr. Frieden writes that “We already know how to” reduce the number of preventable deaths, “now we need to act on what we know.” Also covering the story are the Modern Healthcare (5/2, Johnson, Subscription Publication) “Vital Signs” blog, the NBC News (5/2, Fox) website, HealthDay (5/2, Thompson), Medscape (5/2, Hand), and the Baltimore Business Journal (5/2, Subscription Publication).