The U.S. death rate is on the rise for the first time in more than 15 years, with life expectancy for a baby born in 2015 dropping slightly, the government reported Thursday.
In a trend that's worrying experts, the nation's death rate — or the number of deaths for every 100,000 U.S. residents — rose 1.2 percent from 2014 to last year, the first noteworthy uptick since 1999.
"The increase is significant," Jiaquan Xu, the report co-author and an epidemiologist at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told TODAY. "It's a widespread increase in terms of causes and in terms of gender."
The death rate increased for white men, white women, and black men. All of the major diseases were more lethal, except cancer. Deaths from suicide and accidents were also up.
"Everybody in this country wants to live a long, healthy life, so we should be very concerned," said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
"We've been fortunate to experience steadily improving health in the U.S. ... and we should be very concerned if that trend is going to reverse."
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Christopher J.L. Murray, MD, DPhil, is a Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington and Institute Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).