University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Spring Welcome Back Issue 2018
SPRING WELCOME BACK 2018 GRAPHIC BY MAGGIE LIU
Cause of death: Unknown UHS seeks missing data connected to one-third of student deaths from the last two decades By Sammy Gibbons FEATURES EDITOR
For the past 20 years, University Health Services at UW-Madison recorded the total number of students that died each year. This amounts to 192 total students from April 1998 to 2017, 56 of whom died in the last five years. Many of these students were victims of motor vehicle accidents or took their own lives by suicide. In some cases, the cause of death was not reported but pieced together by UHS staff, who dug up scraps of information using “informal sources,” like news media outlets and obituaries. However, for one-third of all deceased students, the cause of death remains a mystery.
UHS Director of Quality and Informatics Nancy Ranum, along with the staff epidemiologist Agustina Marconi, are working to obtain formal documents in order to record the causes of death for the last 20 years of deceased UW-Madison students. They said having confirmed causes will provide UHS with adequate data to report trends and determine if actions can be taken to prevent numbers of certain causes from rising. “Mortality is not very prevalent in this age group, but we need to check on trends,” Marconi said. “We need to know why these students are dying. If we get to know the official information, we might be able to do some prevention or some actions
to minimize those deaths.”
“Sometimes ... we just knew that a student died and that was it.”
Nancy Ranum director of Quality and Informatics University Health Services
In the last 20 years, suicide was one of the most common fates among recorded student deaths that had known causes. According to UHS Suicide Prevention Coordinator Valerie Donovan, it is the second lead-
ing cause of death among college students nationwide. She said suicide prevention and mental health promotion are campus priorities — there are trainings in place, like UHS’s At-Risk program, that teaches students how to recognize and respond when others are experiencing suicidal thoughts. This is in addition to other efforts to raise awareness and offer services for students. According to Marconi, accurate data about student deaths can also help inform prevention strategies. If staff can notice trends of causes, they could enhance prevention and awareness programs to combat those issues. Donovan gave the example of alcohol connected to
student deaths: If they notice a trend where alcohol was involved somehow in students’ deaths, alcohol prevention leaders will “leverage resources” to fight that trend. “Communicating [about suicide data] carefully and strategically can reduce stigma, encourage help seeking, and prevent suicide,” Donovan said in an email. “Our goals with suicide prevention communications (e.g. raising awareness) are to: reduce stigma around mental health, normalize help-seeking, educate about resources, offer messages of hope and healing, and encourage all members of our campus community to look out for one another.”
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“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”