Last Thursday, the CDC published a list of the top 10 causes of death in the United States in 2023. The list is comprised of data from the National Vital Statistics System. The total for the year was 3,090,582 deaths, down almost 200,000 from 3,279,857 resident deaths in 2022. The top ten list is as follows:
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Unintentional injury
- Stroke
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Diabetes
- Kidney disease
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
- COVID-19
Heart disease and cancer continue to be the top two reasons for loss of life in the US. Heart disease killed over 680,000 Americans and has led in this category for more than 100 consecutive years.
On a more positive note, suicide has dropped out of the top 10 this past year and killed under 50,000 Americans. Jodie Guest, who is a senior vice chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Georgia believes that the data suggests this number will continue to get lower.
COVID also killed under 50,000 people in America this past year, marking the lowest number of deaths caused by the virus in a year since its conception. Despite this, one of the lead mortality researchers at the CDC’s Division of Vital Statistics, Farida Ahmad, still does not think we are clear. She told Yahoo Life, “I would not say we’re out of the woods yet,”.
These numbers create reason for optimism in our country and prove that we as a nation are making progress on avoiding death that is preventable or delayable.
