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Avoidable Mortality

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International Handbook of Adult Mortality

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Population ((IHOP,volume 2))

Abstract

This chapter reviews the most relevant papers related to the concept of avoidable mortality since its origin in the late 1970s. However, for the presentation of empirical results, I concentrate on research published after 2005; for earlier years, there is a review of the literature by Nolte and McKee covering about 200 articles related to avoidable mortality. I searched PubMed and ISI-Web of Science for articles using key words such as avoidable mortality, avoidable causes, amenable mortality, and amenable causes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ICD codes have been adopted by most of the countries in the world to classify causes of death. The version currently use in vital statistics agencies is ICD10 but I use ICD9 to summarize the conditions because this is the most common classification used in the literature. There are, however, some differences in cause codification between ICD classifications. For further details see Chapter 22 by Robert Anderson in this volume in which he describes these differences and their importance for mortality analysis when making comparison across ICD classifications. In addition, more details in cause-specific nomenclature in ICD codes are found at the World Health Organization website: http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en

  2. 2.

    Mackenbach et al. (1988) had provided evidence to justify the inclusion of these conditions as avoidable (Table 23.1).

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Acknowledgment

The author thanks Eileen M. Crimmins and Richard G. Rogers for their valuable comments on this chapter. Financial support was provided by grants from the National Institute on Aging: T32AG000037.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez

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  1. Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez
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Correspondence to Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, 80309-0327, Colorado, USA

    Richard G. Rogers

  2. Davis School of Gerontology, Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California, McClintock Ave. 3715, Los Angeles, 90089-0191, California, USA

    Eileen M. Crimmins

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Beltrán-Sánchez, H. (2011). Avoidable Mortality. In: Rogers, R., Crimmins, E. (eds) International Handbook of Adult Mortality. International Handbooks of Population, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9996-9_23

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