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Montana has the highest child and teen death rate in U.S., study shows

Missoulian - 6/16/2017

BILLINGS - Montana has the highest child and teen death rate in the U.S., according to an annual study.

The newly released Kids Count study, produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for data-based public policy, ranks Montana 47th in the nation for overall child health. It shows Montana lagging behind the rest of the country in key health indicators like insurance rates, obesity rates and death rates.

Most concerning is the child and teen death rate.

"It's the one Montana has struggled with over the years," said Jennifer Calder, outreach and communications director for Montana Kids Count.

South Dakota ranks 49th, Wyoming ranks 45th, and North Dakota Ranks 32nd for child and teen death. For overall health, Wyoming ranks 50th, South Dakota ranks 33rd, and North Dakota ranks 27th.

The leading cause for preventable death for Montana children and teens is motor vehicle crashes. Right behind it is suicide.

Of concern to public health advocates is that the number of child and teen deaths had been dropping in recent years. Then in 2015, the last year complete data was available for the study, it jumped back up dramatically.

In 2011, there were 92 child and teen deaths in the state; by 2014 it had dropped to 70. Then in 2015 the number of deaths climbed to 103.

Of those deaths, 76 were considered preventable.

Broken down a little further, of the 76 preventable deaths, 29 were in motor vehicle crashes and 18 were suicides. Fourteen of the suicides were completed with a firearm.

Most of the child and teen traffic fatalities have more to do with the state's long, empty rural roads and less to do with intoxicated driving, said Thale Dillon with Montana Kids Count.

"Youth who die in motor vehicle accidents, usually it’s from someone else’s driving," Dillon said.

When teenagers crash, they're mostly sober, and they crash on roads that typically are far from any medical assistance.

In fact, one of the highlights from the study was that drug and alcohol use by teens is dropping and getting closer to the national average.

Also encouraging to public health advocates is the state's teen birth rate. For teenage girls age 15 to 17, the number of births has dropped from 231 in 2011 to 180 in 2015.

Another bright spot, or at least a silver lining to what would otherwise be a distressing figure, was Montana's uninsured rate for children, Calder said.

Currently, 8 percent of Montana children carry no insurance, compared to 5 percent nationally.

While it's still more than the national average, it's down from 2011 figures, when 12 percent of the state's children were uninsured.

A big reason for the drop was the Medicaid expansion that was approved by the Montana Legislature in 2015. Families who made too much to qualify for state-assisted insurance but still didn't make enough to be able to afford insurance from the Affordable Care exchange were eligible to receive Medicaid through the expansion approved by the legislature.

The fact that Montana was late to expand Medicaid meant that much of country had made more progress in finding ways to insure children who had previously been uninsured.

Montana is just now starting to catch up, Calder said.

"We started off so much further behind," she said. "We had a lot of ground to make up."