A recent study reveals that the United States showed the lowest performance in recent years compared to other high-income Western countries in reducing the risk of dying from chronic diseases.
Between 2010 and 2019, deaths caused by chronic disease fell in most age groups in the U.S.; however, they actually rose among adults ages 20 to 45. The authors of the study, published in the journal The Lancet on September 10, called the findings “a rare phenomenon in high-income western countries,” per CNN.
A study by researchers at Imperial College London examined data from 185 countries and territories, finding that during the period, the likelihood of dying by age 80 from a non-communicable disease, such as cancer, decreased in most of the assessed countries. However, the study noted the decline had slowed compared to previous years.
“The risk of dying – or what we call probability in the paper – from chronic diseases in most countries in the world is coming down,” said Majid Ezzati, the study’s senior author and a professor in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London and Imperial Global Ghana.
When zooming in on the 25 high-income Western countries, Denmark emerged as the leader in achieving the largest decline in chronic disease deaths, while the U.S. recorded the smallest improvement.
“The U.S. is the slowest, but it’s by no means the exception… Germany is doing nearly as badly,” said Ezzati.
The study says the reason for the decline in chronic disease mortality seen in most of the world is linked to improvements in diagnosing and treating the diseases. However, in roughly 6 out of 10 of the countries analyzed, the decline in chronic disease deaths from 2010 to 2019 was smaller than it had been in the decade prior, or there was a reversal of an earlier decline.
While the U.S. recorded a slight drop in mortality among older adults, the country’s poor performance was a result of the stagnation in reductions among the working-age adult demographic and a rise in mortality among young adult Americans.