January 9, 2017 – Death Data

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Anchor lead: Huge variations in cause of death exist around the country, Elizabeth Tracey reports

What will you die from? Turns out where you live in the United States may have a much greater impact than what you may think, a recent huge study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates.  Mike Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, identifies implications of the study.

Klag: The important message is that when you see these kinds of hot spots you then have to delve deeper, you have to understand what are the reasons for it, who are the individuals involved, what are the individual risk factors? And how does it vary within a county? It predicts where attention should be turned, and then depending on what the reasons are then resources should flow. But I think it’s useful for me because I care deeply about the US to look at these broad differences and in one sense differences can represent inequities, but they can represent opportunities.  :30

Klag says targeted inventions may be a useful place to start. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.