Measuring avoidable mortality

‘Avoidable’ deaths in Great Britain rose in 2020, but what does that mean?

The Office for National Statistics reports avoidable mortality rose in 2020.

What is avoidable mortality? For people dying under the age of 75 years, the Eurostat-OECD definition looks at:

• Preventable mortality: Deaths which are (in the main) avoidable through prevention and public health interventions. These deaths are stoppable before the disease starts, like reducing numbers of infections.
• Treatable mortality: Deaths which are (in the main) avoidable through effective healthcare. These deaths are stoppable after the onset of disease: timely healthcare reduces fatalities.
• Avoidable mortality: Deaths which are either ‘preventable’ or ‘treatable’. This is the sum of these two components.

Analysts look at causes on death certificates in each registration year. They assign deaths as ‘preventable’ or ‘treatable’ based on the cause. For some deaths, such as from cervical cancer, deaths split between the two categories.

Analysts calculate death rates from avoidable causes in each age band. The next step is a weighted average of those rates across all those age bands. That calculation creates the age-standardised mortality rate for avoidable causes.

The age-standardised rate rose across the three nations of Great Britain. Adjusting for population age and size, about…