As expected, car accidents and falls in the elderly account for a largest chunk of deaths. Next you have a cluster of poisoning and suicide (which I guess is classified as unintentional?). Some quick googling suggests that traffic accidents and falls are both roughly top 20 in leading causes of (global) DALY lost, although I’m out of time to check for better sources. I’d bet that poisoning is a bigger problem than currently measured in poorer countries.
Can these causes be targeted? An interaction of public policy and technology has reduced (and continues to reduce) deaths per million vehicle miles traveled. On the latter, I’ve noticed that “risk of falling” is often tracked in studies of the elderly, although I don’t know anything more about this.
An interaction of public policy and technology has reduced (and continues to reduce) deaths per million vehicle miles traveled.
Traffic accidents are hard because risk homeostasis works to negate improvements, and a lot of research has already been put into improving automobile safety, so the outside view is that we should expect continued diminishing returns. On the other hand, autonomous/self-driving cars are a new innovation which could potentially make a big difference. So that seems like a good area to target.
Next you have a cluster of poisoning and suicide (which I guess is classified as unintentional?).
Good luck trying to reduce suicide! Poisoning… I dunno. Many of those might be suicide, and the obvious tactics of child-safety locks and warning labels have been implemented for a long time. Is there any low-hanging fruit there?
I’ve noticed that “risk of falling” is often tracked in studies of the elderly, although I don’t know anything more about this.
Falling is a huge problem for elderly, and also one that seems to me like it could be easily tackled. As Joshua says, there’s architectural improvements to housing that would reduce risk of falling which are currently uncommon, and there are other tactics: exercises and vibrating platforms may be able to improve the balance of elderly, and there’s a biological aspect in weakened bones (vitamin D clinical trials sometimes show reductions in all-cause mortality, which seems to be largely due to better bones leading to fewer damaging falls, and this may be why the bisphonates also reduce all-cause mortality).
An interaction of public policy and technology has reduced (and continues to reduce) deaths per million vehicle miles traveled.
One other thing to note here is that it isn’t clear how much of the technology improvement is technological improvement in medicine. In particular, there’s an argument that murder rates have gone down because people who would have died from from some injuries are now being saved. (See e.g. this summary. ) If so, this has likely also contributed to the reduction in automobile fatalities, although I’m not aware of any studies which have specifically looked at that impact.
Though this still leaves the door open to mitigating road traffic injury, and injury more generally, through improved medical technology. There is at least one juicy bit of low-hanging fruit waiting to be taken here.
I don’t have a specific breakdown data on types of falls in the elderly but one category that is common is falls in the bathrooms. Switching to curbless showers (which have become more common in general in North America) reduces shower falls in the general population and (I’ve been told by people in the industry) reduces falls especially in the elderly. There are likely many small aspects of household design that can help here in similar ways.
Since you asked...No, suicide is not classified as unintentional. Nor is homicide! That is not a chart of unintentional injury, but of all injury, with unintentional causes highlighted by being colored, while suicide and homicide are in white.
The causes of injury are quite skewed. From the CDC, here is chart showing leading causes of “fatal unintentional injury”: http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_injury_deaths_highlighting_unintentional_injury_2012-a.pdf. Note that this isn’t DALY-lost.
As expected, car accidents and falls in the elderly account for a largest chunk of deaths. Next you have a cluster of poisoning and suicide (which I guess is classified as unintentional?). Some quick googling suggests that traffic accidents and falls are both roughly top 20 in leading causes of (global) DALY lost, although I’m out of time to check for better sources. I’d bet that poisoning is a bigger problem than currently measured in poorer countries.
Can these causes be targeted? An interaction of public policy and technology has reduced (and continues to reduce) deaths per million vehicle miles traveled. On the latter, I’ve noticed that “risk of falling” is often tracked in studies of the elderly, although I don’t know anything more about this.
Traffic accidents are hard because risk homeostasis works to negate improvements, and a lot of research has already been put into improving automobile safety, so the outside view is that we should expect continued diminishing returns. On the other hand, autonomous/self-driving cars are a new innovation which could potentially make a big difference. So that seems like a good area to target.
Good luck trying to reduce suicide! Poisoning… I dunno. Many of those might be suicide, and the obvious tactics of child-safety locks and warning labels have been implemented for a long time. Is there any low-hanging fruit there?
Falling is a huge problem for elderly, and also one that seems to me like it could be easily tackled. As Joshua says, there’s architectural improvements to housing that would reduce risk of falling which are currently uncommon, and there are other tactics: exercises and vibrating platforms may be able to improve the balance of elderly, and there’s a biological aspect in weakened bones (vitamin D clinical trials sometimes show reductions in all-cause mortality, which seems to be largely due to better bones leading to fewer damaging falls, and this may be why the bisphonates also reduce all-cause mortality).
One other thing to note here is that it isn’t clear how much of the technology improvement is technological improvement in medicine. In particular, there’s an argument that murder rates have gone down because people who would have died from from some injuries are now being saved. (See e.g. this summary. ) If so, this has likely also contributed to the reduction in automobile fatalities, although I’m not aware of any studies which have specifically looked at that impact.
Though this still leaves the door open to mitigating road traffic injury, and injury more generally, through improved medical technology. There is at least one juicy bit of low-hanging fruit waiting to be taken here.
I don’t have a specific breakdown data on types of falls in the elderly but one category that is common is falls in the bathrooms. Switching to curbless showers (which have become more common in general in North America) reduces shower falls in the general population and (I’ve been told by people in the industry) reduces falls especially in the elderly. There are likely many small aspects of household design that can help here in similar ways.
Since you asked...No, suicide is not classified as unintentional. Nor is homicide! That is not a chart of unintentional injury, but of all injury, with unintentional causes highlighted by being colored, while suicide and homicide are in white.
Oops! Thanks for catching that.