The hidden secret behind avoidable deaths
Omitting over 75s in preventable death statistics has worrying implications for the value we place on older people’s lives.
In this short blog, Carole Easton, our Chief Executive, explains how data that fails to include over 75s in calculations for preventable deaths is masking a wider issue.
Today I read a sentence that shocked me profoundly. It came from the website of the Office for National Statistics and it read:
‘Avoidable deaths accounted for 40.1% of all male deaths in the most deprived areas of England compared with 17.8% in the least deprived areas in 2020; for female deaths, it was 26.7% and 11.9%, respectively.’
These discrepancies are appalling. Our recent State of Ageing 2022 report showed how women in the wealthiest parts of the country are set to live 16 years longer in good health than those in the poorest. And these latest statistics confirm the wholly unfair reality that living in the most deprived areas means you are, to put it bluntly, less likely to live longer.
What I had not realised, and probably neither do many others, is that the figures relating to avoidable deaths do not include those aged over 75.
That keeps us in line with the OECD standard which has to take into account countries with lower life expectancies than ours. International comparability of data matters – we need to know how we match up to other countries – but it also risks sending a signal that, as a society, we are not concerned with why anyone over 75 dies and whether we could have done anything about it. It risks conveying that someone’s life is less valuable because on average they have fewer years ahead of them.
The State of Ageing 2022
Read moreOf course, death is more common over 75, but this is not a sufficient reason to ignore whether or not there are measures that should be taken to reduce the incidence of avoidable deaths in this age group.
I don’t suppose that the figures about avoidable deaths will hit the headlines this week, given everything else that is going on. But they should.
They should be news until the government’s levelling up agenda results in the elimination of discrepancies in avoidable deaths around the country.
They should be news until we see that the lives of people over 75 are valued sufficiently to be counted by someone, and in our considerations of what can be done to reduce the numbers of avoidable deaths – no matter someone’s age.