US Death Rate on the Rise for the First Time in Ten Years

Preliminary data from 2015 indicates that for the first time in a decade, the US death rate is on the rise.

While deaths from HIV and cancer are declining, there was a boost in death by drugs, homicide, suicide, Alzheimer's disease, and guns. These spikes caused the mortality rate per 100,000 people to jump from 723.2 in 2014, to 729.5 in 2015.

”It’s an uptick in mortality and that doesn’t usually happen, so it’s significant,” said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaking with the New York Times. ”But the question is, what does it mean? We really need more data to know. If we start looking at 2016 and we see another rise, we’ll be a lot more concerned.”

The report released on Wednesday by the CDC states that the death rate has been cut in half since 1950, thanks to medical advancement, and that the uptick could be an anomaly.

''We are not accustomed to seeing death rates increase on a national scale,'' Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at the C.D.C. told the Times. ''We've seen increases in mortality for some groups, but it is quite rare to see it for the whole population.''

A full report on deaths in 2015 is due to be released in December.