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

Limitations

Years of potential life lost before 75 by NCHS rankable cause and county of residence; the Georgia Rankable YPLL topic counts the same deaths, so never add across them. The rate is years lost per 100,000 residents under 75, not age-adjusted. OASIS withholds rates on 1-4 deaths (NULL). race_unknown and all_other_causes are our calculations, with no rate. Race groups are NULL in 52 county-years (2000-2006) with over 20% unknown race or ethnicity; small groups' series break before 2015, not trends. 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). 48% 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: unintentional_injuries (130,136.5 years), diseases_of_heart (128,819 years), malignant_neoplasms (126,930.5 years); all_other_causes held 131,143.5, more than any category, but it is not one cause. all_other_causes is all minus the 48 categories: 13% to 17% of Georgia's years lost a year, 2000-2025. Georgia's all_other_causes years lost jump for one year in 2008 (117,831.5), 2012 (114,458) and 2015 (127,337), about 10,100 to 15,200 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). NCHS ranks 52 causes; OASIS's list lacks four (Clostridium difficile infection, pregnancy and childbirth, complications of medical and surgical care, operations of war), whose years are in all_other_causes, as are drug overdoses of undetermined intent (OASIS's list has no such category). unintentional_injuries includes unintentional drug overdoses, falls and motor vehicle crashes; suicide includes drug suicides; 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 all_other_causes, which holds unspecified dementia (the NCHS list does not rank it), shows no matching fall (110,729.5 to 111,579 years): don't read alzheimers_disease across 2014-2016 as a trend. From 2014 on, dementia deaths also moved into senile degeneration of the brain (G31.1, in all_other_causes 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 all_other_causes 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.