A new analysis of national mortality data from The Schiller Kessler Group reveals that preventable injuries claimed 197,449 American lives in 2024, ranking preventable death as the third leading cause of fatality in the United States, trailing only heart disease and cancer. That equates to an average of 541 preventable deaths every single day, or more than 22 every hour.
The national age-adjusted preventable injury death rate stood at 58.55 deaths per 100,000 people in 2024, though the analysis found that figure masks a striking geographic divide, with the most dangerous states recording rates more than double those of the safest. Just three categories, poisoning, falls and motor vehicle crashes, accounted for 84% of all preventable deaths nationally, with no other cause representing more than 4% of the total.
Poisoning, driven largely by the ongoing drug overdose crisis, has held the top spot among preventable death causes since 2013 and claimed 75,761 lives in 2024, 38.4% of all preventable fatalities and the equivalent of 208 deaths a day. Opioids were involved in 51,088 of those deaths, with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl responsible for 45,917. Falls ranked second, causing 48,308 deaths (24.5%), while motor vehicle crashes ranked third with 42,789 deaths (21.7%), averaging more than 117 deaths daily.
The analysis found that where a person lives can shape their risk of preventable death nearly as much as individual behavior. Alaska recorded the nation’s highest age-adjusted rate at 91.78 deaths per 100,000, 56.8% above the national average and 2.4 times higher than the lowest-ranked state, New Jersey, whose rate of 38.44 per 100,000 anchored the bottom of the list alongside New York (39.67), Hawaii (41.01), Nebraska (41.56) and Virginia (43.36). West Virginia ranked second most dangerous at 87.78 per 100,000, followed by New Mexico (79.31), Tennessee (75.14), Oklahoma (73.96), Maine (73.30), Vermont (71.23), Arizona (70.86), and Kentucky and Mississippi (70.46). Five of the ten most dangerous states were in the South, a pattern the analysis links to rural geography, lower insurance coverage and public health underinvestment, while Maine and Vermont’s presence points to similar risks facing rural New England due to aging populations and limited trauma care access.
Risk also shifts considerably by age. Motor vehicle crashes lead as the top cause of preventable death for those aged 5 to 24, while poisoning dominates every age group from 25 to 64, and falls become the leading threat after age 65. Adults aged 85 and older recorded the single highest death total of any age group at 27,996, despite representing a small share of the overall population, with Wisconsin (990.36 per 100,000), Vermont (932.73) and Minnesota (863.63) posting the highest rates for that age group specifically. Working-age adults between 30 and 59 bore a substantial share of the burden as well, with poisoning and overdoses the dominant cause, a pattern especially severe in West Virginia, where preventable injury death rates reached 151.3 per 100,000 among adults aged 40 to 44.
The data also revealed a persistent inequity in drowning deaths, which claimed 4,540 lives in 2024. Black children aged 10 to 14 drown at 3.6 times the rate of White children in the same age group, a disparity researchers attribute largely to unequal access to swimming lessons and safe water facilities, with nearly two-thirds of Black adults nationally reporting they have never taken a swimming lesson.
While 2024’s total marked an 11.3% decline from 2023, driven in part by a 24% drop in poisoning deaths tied to expanded naloxone access, the analysis cautions against reading too much into the improvement. The 2024 total remains 14.1% above the pre-pandemic baseline of 173,040 deaths recorded in 2019, and the current age-adjusted rate of 52.1 per 100,000 is still well above the historic low of 34 per 100,000 recorded in 1992.
“These numbers represent hundreds of thousands of families who lost someone in a way that, in many cases, could have been prevented,” said a spokesperson for the firm. “When that loss is the result of another party’s negligence, families deserve to understand their legal options and have someone fighting for the compensation they’re owed.”