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Therefore, understanding the factors that drive this variation in health effort may help to inform interventions aimed at reducing avoidable deaths.

The amount of effort that people invest in their long-term health and safety varies considerably between individuals. Finally, we call for greater journalistic responsibility when reporting health risks to the public.Īpproximately 23% of deaths in the UK in 2020 were considered avoidable, many of them being due to diseases often associated with unhealthy behaviours (e.g., cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and illnesses related to drug and alcohol use (Office for National Statistics 2022). More work is needed to understand the barriers to engaging with preventative behaviours and maintaining a healthy heart. We suggest that more can be done by public health communicators to emphasise the lifestyle and behavioural changes that individuals can make to reduce their general cancer risk. Finally, our sample substantially overestimated the prevalence of drug and alcohol-related deaths in the UK. However, perceptions of control over specific causes of death were found not to predict overall PUMR, with the exception of cardiovascular disease. Drugs and alcohol were perceived as risks both high in control and low in likelihood of death. Cardiovascular disease was considered moderately controllable and a likely cause of death.

Risk of death due to cancer was considered highly likely to occur but largely beyond individual control. We also measured overall perceived uncontrollable mortality risk (PUMR) and perceived prevalence for each of the Office for National Statistics’ categories of avoidable death. We assessed perceived control, perceived personal likelihood of death, certainty of risk estimation, and perceived knowledge for 20 causes of death. We recruited a nationally representative online sample of 1500 participants in the UK. Identifying causes of death believed to be uncontrollable, but likely to occur, may provide actionable targets for health interventions to increase control beliefs and encourage healthier behaviours. The degree to which people invest in their long-term health is influenced by how much they believe they can control their risk of death. A large number of deaths could be avoided by improving health behaviours.