Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Dec 20;379(25):2468-2475.
doi: 10.1056/NEJMsr1804754.

The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States

Rebecca M Cunningham  1 , Maureen A Walton  1 , Patrick M Carter  1
Affiliations

The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States

Rebecca M Cunningham et al. N Engl J Med. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Mortality Rates (Deaths per 100,000 Children and Adolescents) for the 10 Leading Causes of Death in the United States from 1999 to 2016.
Data were obtained from the Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) system of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), known as CDC WONDER, according to the codes of the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10), for the leading causes of death among children and adolescents. Age was restricted to children and adolescents 1 to 19 years of age.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Global Comparison of Mortality for the Two Leading Causes of Child and Adolescent Death in the United States in 2016.
Rates of death in countries other than the United States are from the World Health Organization (WHO) Mortality Database, according to ICD-10 codes for leading causes of death (www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/mortality_rawdata/en/). Death counts were tabulated with the use of the same ICD-10 codes that were specified in the CDC WONDER query (Fig. S3 in the Supplementary Appendix). Population denominators that were used to calculate rates were obtained from files available on the WHO Mortality Database website for population according to country and age group, and data on the five largest high-income countries (besides the United States) and the four largest low-to-middle-income countries are presented here. In the case of Australia, 2016 population data were not available and 2015 data are presented. The error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. See Figure S1 in the Supplementary Appendix for all countries with available 2016 data.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Mortality for the Five Leading Causes of Child and Adolescent Death in 2016, According to Rurality.
Data were obtained from the CDC WONDER database, according to ICD-10 codes for the leading causes of death among children and adolescents. The 2013 National Center for Health Statistics Urban–Rural Classification Scheme for Counties was used to assign one of six categories to each county in the United States. Counties were classified as urban (Large Central Metro or Large Fringe Metro), suburban (Medium Metro or Small Metro), or rural (Micropolitan or Noncore). The I bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. See Figure S2 in the Supplementary Appendix for data on all 10 leading causes of death.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • The Problem for Children in America.
    Campion EW. Campion EW. N Engl J Med. 2018 Dec 20;379(25):2466-2467. doi: 10.1056/NEJMe1814600. N Engl J Med. 2018. PMID: 30575478 No abstract available.
  • The Major Causes of Death in Children.
    Bleyer A. Bleyer A. N Engl J Med. 2019 Apr 4;380(14):1383-1384. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc1901264. N Engl J Med. 2019. PMID: 30943359 No abstract available.
  • The Major Causes of Death in Children.
    Bandara NA, Jhauj R, Mehrnoush V. Bandara NA, et al. N Engl J Med. 2019 Apr 4;380(14):1384-1385. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc1901264. N Engl J Med. 2019. PMID: 30943360 No abstract available.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. Estimates of the U.S. population by age and sex: April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2016 (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-tps38-populatio...).
    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Compressed mortality file, 1999–2016, on CDC WONDER online database. 2017. (https://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd10.html).
    1. ICD10Data.com home page (http://www.icd10data.com/).
    1. Brenner RA, Trumble AC, Smith GS, Kessler EP, Overpeck MD. Where children drown, United States, 1995. Pediatrics 2001; 108: 85–9. - PubMed
    1. Brenner RA. Prevention of drowning in infants, children, and adolescents. Pediatrics 2003; 112: 440–5. - PubMed