A newly-released report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently caught our eye. It’s titled Potentially Preventable Deaths from the Five Leading Causes of Death – United States, 2008–2010 and includes a huge spreadsheet of numbers.
Numbers can be hard to put into perspective, so we transformed a massive spreadsheet into a visual map.
The report looks at the five leading causes of death in the United States and drills it down to the state level. For the five leading causes of death, the data for each state includes the number of observed deaths, expected deaths and potentially preventable deaths.
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The five leading causes of death in the United States:
1. Diseases of the heart
2. Cancer
3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases
4. Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
5. Unintentional injuries
The glaring omission from the CDC’s report is a breakdown of a state’s percentage of deaths that were classified as potentially preventable.
This had us thinking: what would happen if we visualized this data? Which states saw the largest percentage of its population die via a classified “potentially preventable death?” And if ranked, were there trends or valuable information we could see when visually shown on a map of the United States?
We crunched the numbers and put together the infographic you see below.
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(Please note: unfortunately, the interactive version of this infographic cannot be embedded on MedCity News. To view the interactive version (which includes all state data, visit the Zweena Health Blog at http://zweenahealth.com/ranked-by-state-potentially-preventable-deaths-visual-map.)
The most eye-opening statistic we found? The difference between the states with the highest and lowest percentage of potentially preventable deaths (Mississippi and Utah, respectively) is a staggering 39.41%.
What stands out to you in the infographic below?
Kerry joined the Zweena Health team in 2013 and is dedicated to spreading the word about the importance of owning your own medical information. She currently resides in San Jose, California with her husband.
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