Heart disease and cancer accounted for 298 of the 717 deaths recorded among U.S. Virgin Islands residents in 2023, representing nearly 42 percent of the territory’s total, according to newly released federal mortality data.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics published Deaths: Final Data for 2023 on November 12. The report lists 169 USVI deaths from heart disease and 129 from cancer, providing a historical account of deaths in 2023 rather than a measure of current mortality.
Other causes detailed in the territory’s figures include 45 deaths from cerebrovascular diseases, commonly described as stroke; 44 from Alzheimer’s disease; and 33 from diabetes. The report also records 35 deaths from essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease, a separate category from heart disease, and 15 from chronic lower respiratory diseases.
The figures are based on the underlying cause recorded on death certificates. That classification identifies the disease or injury that initiated the events leading to death, rather than counting every condition a person may have had.
Chronic illness has been a longstanding concern for territorial health officials. As The Consortium reported following the Department of Health’s 2022 Health Equity Summit, medical, health and insurance partners gathered on St. Croix to examine disparities in healthcare access and ways to improve health outcomes.
The CDC publication includes territorial figures in its geographic tables, but its national totals cover the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not the USVI and other territories. The territory’s one-year figures do not, by themselves, establish whether deaths from a particular disease are increasing or declining.
