Diabetes, cancer, guns, more: Mississippians are dying faster than anyone in the US
For the second year in a row, Mississippi has the most deaths per capita in the country.
For every 100,000 U.S. residents, 1,202.1 people died in 2021 and 1,138.7 people died in 2020, according to the Center for Disease Control.
All 10 of the states with the highest deaths were south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Alabama (1156.7), West Virginia (1150.3), Oklahoma (1125.6) and Tennessee (1121.3) rounded out the top five.
The CDC also tracks causes of death. Mississippi ranked first in Alzheimer deaths, with 52.7 per 100,000 people succumbing to the disease. Alabama ranked second with 47.6.
Mississippians are more than twice as likely to die from hypertension than the folks in Louisiana, Florida and nearly every other state in the country. For every 100,000 people, 20.1 died from the preventable condition.
According to the CDC, for every 100,000 people in Mississippi, 28.6 gun-related deaths took place in 2020, the last year data is available. That amounted to 818 deaths that year, a 15.2% increase from 2019.
More Mississippi residents died from influenza and pneumonia than anywhere else in the country. In 2021, the state had 20.1 deaths per 100,000 reported.
At a rate of 12 per 100,000, Mississippi tied with Utah for the highest number of deaths caused by Parkinson’s Disease. The state tied with Delaware for the highest number of residents (56.1) who died from a stroke.
Mississippi ranked second in the nation with 41.9 per capita deaths from diabetes in 2021. Only West Virginia fared worse with 43.5 deaths per 100,000. The state was also second highest in chronic lower respiratory diseases (57.6) and kidney disease (20.8).
About 16,000 new cases of cancer are reported and 6,500 people die of cancer each year in Mississippi, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health. MDH issued a comprehensive cancer control plan to “reduce human suffering and economic burden from cancer for Mississippi residents” in 2018. But, the progress has been slow. The number of deaths per capita due to cancer has dropped from 179 in 2019 to 178.1 in 2021.
The state ranked third for cancer deaths (178.1 deaths per 100,000), heart disease (246.6) and COVID-19 deaths (173.3).
Mississippi ranked higher than all of its neighboring states in deaths caused by HIV disease. Where Alabama and Tennessee reported 1.7 deaths per 100,000 residents, Mississippi had 2.5. The state was only behind Florida, which had 2.6.
