By Olivia Trani

Child and adolescent mortality rates in the United States rose by 20% between 2019 and 2021, the largest increase in at least 50 years, according to an editorial published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. These increases follow decades of progress in lowering the rate of death from childhood diseases. The alarming spike in pediatric mortality is primarily due to deaths from homicide, accidental drug overdoses, motor vehicle accidents and suicide among those ages 10 to 19.

The new research is based on a detailed examination of death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The analysis revealed that the mortality rate of Americans ages 1 to 19 rose by 11% between 2019 and 2020 and an additional 8% between 2020 and 2021.

“I have not seen this in my career,” said lead author Steven Woolf, M.D., director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “For decades, the overall death rate among U.S. children has fallen steadily, thanks to breakthroughs in prevention and treatment of diseases like premature births, pediatric cancer and birth defects. We now see a dramatic reversal of this trajectory, meaning that our children are now less likely to reach adulthood. This is a red flashing light. We need to understand the causes and address them immediately to protect our children.”

Read full article here: https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-teen-mortality-in-the-us-experiences-largest-increase-in-decades