• Posted February 24, 2026

Gap In Preventable Deaths Widening Between Those With, Without A College Degree

A gap in preventable deaths is growing between people with and without a college degree, a new study says.

A steadily increasing number of people with a high school diploma or less are dying from illnesses that could have been prevented by health care, researchers reported in the American Journal of Public Health.

A growing number of less-educated people also are going without health care, even if they suffer from chronic illnesses that put them at greater risk of death, researchers found.

And this is likely to grow worse under cutbacks to Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed by the Republican-led Congress and enacted by the Trump administration, researchers said.

“I fear for the future. Millions are set to lose Medicaid and ACA coverage, most of whom lack a college degree,” researcher Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of public health at CUNY’s Hunter College in New York City, said in a news release. “That’s a group that already struggles to get the care they need to prevent premature death.”

For the new study, researchers analyzed data for more than 476,000 Americans between 1996 and 2022, comparing their use of health care against death certificates to see how many died.

Results showed that people without a college degree had a 144% greater rate of medically preventable deaths in 2023 compared to those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. 

That’s up from a 71% gap in preventable deaths between those with and without a college degree in 2001, researchers said.

Researchers linked this to a growing gap in health care access based on a person’s education.

In 1996, about 26% of adults without a college degree had no health care visits compared with 20% of adults with a college degree.

By 2022, that 6-percentage point gap had more than doubled, reaching 13 percentage points – 29% of those without a college degree going without any health care versus 16% of those with a degree.

Researchers were most concerned about people with one or more chronic diseases who had zero doctor visits — 24% of those without a college degree in 2022, compared to 16% of those with a college degree.

“It has long been assumed that inequalities in housing, nutrition and exposure to air pollution and other hazards underlie the high death rates of less privileged Americans,” said lead researcher Dr. Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

“Many experts have doubted that poor access to health care is a major contributor to those mortality differences,” he continued in a news release. “While many factors undoubtedly contribute to these disparities, our findings indicate that lack of health care puts people in mortal danger.”

The upshot: “Far too many Americans — particularly those with less education — never see a doctor in the course of the year, even if they have a serious chronic illness,” Gaffney concluded.

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on preventive care.

SOURCE: Harvard Medical School/CUNY, news release, Feb. 19, 2026