Actual numbers for probabilities of adverse health events (in life)

June 2, 2022 1:06 PM

Is there some kind of public record / database showing the probabilities of things like broken legs, severe depression, and/or having one's car totaled/house burn down/etc? I'm aware that insurance companies probably want to keep these statistics to themselves, but has anybody made anything like this findable for the public in any kind of searchable/convenient/let-me-do-my-own-risk-assessment form?

Searching [probability of adverse health event] turned up some articles about bad surgical/hospital outcomes, but that's not what I'm interested in.

I'm interested in, for example, given 100,000 college-educated individuals in the United States, how many of them will have an emergency room visit and/or have hospital costs to pay; how many of them will be hit by an uninsured motorist / have their cars totaled; etc.

Basically, I want to be able to show how likely it is that _something_ will happen to derail someone's life if they aren't lucky, at least for some specific outcomes if not all.

posted by amtho to Grab Bag (5 answers total)

Try this google search https://www.google.com/search?q=likelihood+of+becoming+disabled. I don't know if disability is exactly what you are looking for, but it seems close.
posted by catquas at 1:28 PM on June 2, 2022

Health and Human Services: https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/what-lifetime-risk-needing-receiving-long-term-services-supports-0

CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/disability.htm

FastStats is a great index: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/default.htm
posted by Bottlecap at 1:31 PM on June 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is actually a great question to ask a librarian.

I’m just guessing here but I imagine data on this type of thing is definitely collected, however, I am not sure it’s going to be available in the accessible format you’re thinking of just because there’s no incentive for groups like actuaries or public health academic researchers to take the time to build the site, continually update it, and make it understandable to a lay audience.

A librarian would be super helpful for finding resources like say health literacy organizations that do the work to make this kind of research accessible to general audiences.
posted by forkisbetter at 7:04 PM on June 2, 2022

Maybe something like HCUP? There’s a ton of data and tools to dig into, but the data from HCUP can produce things like this: Trends in Emergency Department Visits, 2006-2011 which seems along the lines of what you want? This would be for medical things only, not for accidental things like houses burning down etc.
posted by MadamM at 8:41 PM on June 2, 2022

Here's a visualization of some data related to deaths specifically, which might be of interest.

I don't think you're going to find one database that has all the outcomes you are interested in, so it might make more sense to develop a list of what you care about and then research them one by one or at least in groups. All of the examples you give seem fairly answerable with a little searching.
posted by ssg at 11:59 AM on June 3, 2022