Years of Potential Life Lost by Cause (Georgia Rankable Causes)

Limitations

Years of potential life lost before 75 by Georgia rankable cause and home county; the NCHS Rankable YPLL topic counts the same years: never add across them. The rate is per 100,000 residents under 75, not age-adjusted. OASIS withholds rates on 1-4 deaths. race_unknown and all_other_causes have no rate. Sex-specific cancer rates on all and race rows divide by both sexes. Race groups are NULL in 52 county-years (2000-2006) with over 20% unknown race; small groups break before 2015, not trends. Breast, cervix/uterus/ovary and prostate/testis cancer YPLL rates on the all and race rows are per 100,000 residents under 75 of both sexes (OASIS's rule for these causes, which its YPLL rate follows: every published rate is the row's years lost over the row's own population under 75), so they run well below the per-woman or per-man rates, about half in Georgia (2024: breast 125.1 on the all row against 241.5 on the female row; prostate and testis 35.2 against 72.2 on the male row): use the female or male row for those. Each death before 75 adds 75 minus the age at death, counted at the middle of the year of age (74.5 years for an infant death), so values end in .0 or .5; deaths at 75 or older add nothing. ypll_rate_per_100k is OASIS's YPLL rate: years lost per 100,000 residents under 75 of the place and group (num_ypll_75 / num_population_under_75 x 100,000 reproduces every published rate). OASIS publishes no age-adjusted YPLL rate, so part of a difference between places or groups can come from their age mix under 75. OASIS publishes every YPLL figure, however small, and withholds the rate wherever the place and group had 1-4 deaths in the cause (NULL here), even when none of them was before 75; the platform adds no small-cell suppression of its own and never recomputes a withheld rate. A group with no residents under 75 in a place (num_population_under_75 0) has no rate (NULL): OASIS shows 0 there, but a rate on no population is undefined and would rank as the lowest (our mask; the years lost stay 0 unless the race mask NULLs them). 58% of rows with years lost have no rate, mostly 1-4 deaths in small counties, small groups and rare causes. num_ypll_75 counts years, not deaths, and the years come in clumps (one infant death adds 74.5), so they are not independent events: don't test differences in them as if they were. Race groups follow the platform convention from OASIS's race x ethnicity cross: hispanic is Hispanic of any race; white, black, asian, native_american (American Indian or Alaska Native), pacific_islander (Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) and multiracial are non-Hispanic. race_unknown is our calculation, all minus those seven (unknown ethnicity, or non-Hispanic of unknown race), so the race groups' years lost add up to all wherever the race mask (below) leaves them; it has no population and so no rate. Hispanic ethnicity is under-reported on death certificates, so hispanic figures may be low. The smaller race groups' series break in ways that look like changes in how race was recorded, not in mortality (our reading; the deaths_by_cause topics show the same breaks in deaths): Georgia's multiracial years lost were 0-831 a year in 2000-2007, then 2,672 in 2008, 320 in 2009 and 5,563.5 in 2012; native_american's YPLL rate went from 11,764.3 (2005) to 1,097.7 (2008); asian years lost went 7,507.5, 2,767.5, 6,511 in 2005-2007; and 15,974-28,543 years a year in 2000-2006 are race_unknown (mostly unknown ethnicity), against at most 6,376 since, so the non-Hispanic groups are undercounted then. Since 2015 multiracial has had Georgia's lowest all-cause YPLL rate of any race group every year, at most 51% of the next lowest (2024: 1,255.4 against 7,758.6 for all races), probably because death certificates record more than one race far less often than population estimates do (our reading): don't compare them with other groups, and don't read the small groups' changes before 2015 as trends. Where race or ethnicity is unknown for more than 20% of a place-year's deaths (race_unknown / all, all causes: OASIS's death counts, as in the deaths_by_cause topics), the race groups' years lost and rates for that place and year are NULL (our mask, OASIS's own 20% threshold for missing items): each group would miss its share of the unknowns, so its figures run low and its trend follows the recording, not the group. The all, sex and race_unknown rows and the population under 75 are kept, so the unknown share stays visible. It applies to 52 county-years (10 counties, 2000-2006, never Georgia), the death topics' own, on every cause: in those years a race group's county years lost can add up to less than Georgia's race row, which counts every county. num_population_under_75 is OASIS's own population under 75 (its population module, the 17 age groups under 75 summed) for the place, year and group; the race groups' populations add to all, as do male and female. Georgia 2024's top causes of years lost: accidental_poisoning (58,118.5 years), ischemic_heart_and_vascular_disease (52,027.5 years), suicide (49,163 years), motor_vehicle_crashes (45,928.5 years); all_other_causes held 149,575, more than any category, but it is not one cause. Georgia's largest category of years lost is ischemic_heart_and_vascular_disease in every year, 2025 included, except: motor_vehicle_crashes in 2006-2007; accidental_poisoning in 2020 and 2022-2024; covid_19 in 2021. all_other_causes is all minus the 55 categories: 16% to 21% of Georgia's years lost a year, 2000-2025. It holds what the list leaves out: heart failure and other heart disease (beyond ischemic, hypertensive and rheumatic), ill-defined causes, most digestive and skin disease, cancer sites not listed, in situ and benign neoplasms, injuries of undetermined intent (including drug overdoses of undetermined intent), complications of medical care and pregnancy. Georgia's all_other_causes years lost jump for one year in 2008 (149,382.5), 2012 (140,515.5) and 2015 (153,956.5), about 8,300 to 15,100 years above the average of the years before and after, as its deaths do (deaths_by_cause topics): in OASIS's Detailed list those extra deaths are in none of its 15 cause groups, mostly ill-defined or unknown causes (ICD-10 R codes), probably deaths whose cause was still pending (our reading; OASIS documents no reason). For all heart disease or all cancers use the NCHS list's diseases_of_heart and malignant_neoplasms (premature_death_ypll_nchs_rankable); never sum this list's categories for them. The eight unintentional-injury categories (motor_vehicle_crashes through other_unintentional_injury) together cover unintentional injuries by OASIS's definitions; their Georgia years lost match the NCHS list's unintentional_injuries except in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2013 (2009: 90,255 against 90,842 years), so OASIS's own figures differ slightly between the lists. accidental_poisoning excludes drug suicides (in suicide) and homicides (in homicide). hypertension_and_hypertensive_heart_and_renal_disease includes hypertensive heart disease, which NCHS counts in heart disease, and ischemic_heart_and_vascular_disease includes atherosclerosis and aortic aneurysm. covid_19 is 0 before 2020. Dementia deaths moved between causes in 2014-2016 (our reading: a change in how they were coded, not in how many people died): Georgia's alzheimers_disease deaths nearly doubled, from 2,042 in 2013 to 4,017 in 2016 (deaths_by_cause topics). Most dementia deaths are at 75 and over and add no years, so the shift is small in years lost: alzheimers_disease went from 861.5 to 1,753.5 years (0.1% and 0.2% of Georgia's years lost), while other_mental_behavioral_disorders, which holds unspecified dementia, fell from 3,663.5 to 2,354.5 years (its deaths: 4,626 to 2,716, deaths_by_cause_georgia_rankable): don't read either series across 2014-2016 as a trend. From 2014 on, dementia deaths also moved into senile degeneration of the brain (G31.1, in other_nervous_system_diseases here): 5 Georgia deaths in 2013, 3,947 in 2025 (dementia_deaths), while alzheimers_disease's age-adjusted death rate fell from 47.8 (2018) to 30.9 (2025) and unspecified dementia fell too; the three together held steady, so this is probably coding as well (our reading). Few of these deaths were before 75, so years lost barely show it (alzheimers_disease: 2,155.5 years in 2018, 2,302 in 2025), but don't read alzheimers_disease or other_nervous_system_diseases as a trend after 2013. Deaths are placed by county of residence as OASIS geocodes it, so about 4% land in a different county than in the federal NCHS files. 2025, the newest year, was added to OASIS on 2026-07-29; OASIS marks no year provisional. Counties add up to Georgia, except a race group's years lost in a year the race mask NULLs some of its county rows. Not served: OASIS's SES-vulnerability rows (its SES rates divide by the whole place's population), age and education breakdowns, and the death counts and rates (the deaths_by_cause topics). tract_geoid is always NULL.