The World Health Organization reported, ¨More than 1.2 million adolescents die every year around the world, an average of 3,000 deaths per day, from causes that are largely preventable.¨ The leading cause of adolescent deaths per year is due to road injury. These are kids between the ages of ten and nineteen getting into car crashes. In 2015 alone, there were 115,000 deaths due to car crashes. These were followed by lower respiratory infections and self harm.

However, these facts differ when looking at males and females separately. For males ages 15-19, the top leading causes of death are road injury, physical or sexual abuse, emotional threats, and self harm. CNN said, ¨Dr. Sonia Saxena, a primary care expert at Imperial College London who was not involved with the report, highlighted that previous studies have found that the leading causes of death among adolescents in higher-income developed countries is risky behavior, such as drug and alcohol abuse, rather than the environment they live in.¨

For adolescent females the leading causes change again. The leading causes are maternal conditions, self harm, and road injury. Maternal conditions, such as unsafe abortions, pregnancy complications, and childbirth, were all the leading causes for these females. Saxena said, ¨Young girls with little family or community support are more likely to find themselves in situations where sex work becomes an option, opening them up to pregnancy and new infections.¨

Many things could be implemented to limit the amount of teen deaths per year. One would be the use of better health care around the world for teens. However, one very important thing about the health of teenagers is how they were parented. Dr. David Ross, a medical officer at the World Health Organization and co-author of the report given, said, ¨There is very strong evidence that parenting makes a huge difference to adolescent health risk.¨