JH-IIRU Team Members Publish Paper on Life Expectancy in Brazil

The burden of road traffic crashes is significant in Brazil, which has one of the highest road traffic mortality rates of any country in the Americas.
In a recent publication, “Impact of Road Traffic Deaths on Expected Years of Life Lost and Reduction in Life Expectancy in Brazil,” JH-IIRU faculty, including associate director, Aruna Chandran, and senior technical advisor, David Bishai, as well as colleagues from Universidade Federal do Rio Grand do Sul, calculate years of life lost and the resulting reduction in life expectancy as a result of road traffic deaths in order to better characterize the full extent of the burden of road traffic deaths.

The research indicates that road traffic deaths in Brazil account for more than 1.5 million life-years lost, with 80% occurring among males. The team also discovered that road traffic crashes reduce at-birth life expectancy in Brazilians by approximately 9 months for males and 2 months for females.  The authors also show how the years of life lost could be reduced if the different geographic regions in Brazil improved their road safety statistics to match those of the best-performing region.

With road traffic crashes responsible for nearly 1.3 million deaths globally each year (a number that is expected to increase by 65% by 2020 if no interventions are made), illustrating the years of life lost and the resulting reduction in life expectancy, as well as the potential for reducing the road mortality rate, is vital to support for the need for the continued implementation of evidence-based road safety interventions in Brazil.

“Impact of Road Traffic Deaths on Expected Years of Life Lost and Reduction in Life Expectancy in Brazil” will appear in the upcoming edition of Demography.

To read the entire article, click here.

For more information on the Road Safety in 10 Countries Project (RS-10) click here.