A new study examining paternal mortality data in Georgia found that 60% of the deaths were preventable.
It took nearly a century for maternal mortality in the United States to be acknowledged, pushed out of focus, and then recognized again as a major public health emergency.
Paternal mortality has followed a very different path. Research shows that fathers, especially men from their 20s into their early 40s, are more likely to die from preventable causes, including suicide, overdose, homicide, and accidental injury. Even so, deaths among fathers are rarely studied in relation to becoming a parent.
Northwestern University scientists are working to bring attention to that gap.
A new Northwestern study looked at all 130,267 babies born in Georgia in 2017 and followed whether their fathers died at any time over the next five years, through 2022. Among fathers who died within five years (796), 60% of the deaths were considered preventable, a finding the study authors describe as a “huge, missed opportunity.” The deaths included homicide (143), accidental injury (142), suicide (102), and overdose (93), while 296 fathers died from natural causes.
The study was recently published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Maternal mortality review committees examine deaths of mothers during the first year of a child’s life in focused detail. By contrast, this is, to the researchers’ knowledge, the first study in a major medical journal to examine fathers’ deaths in the years after a child is born.
“Our data show that fathers die frequently in the first years of their child’s life, and we have no systems in place to understand how we might prevent it,” said corresponding author Dr. Craig Garfield, professor of pediatrics and medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “That’s a huge blind spot.”
The findings mirror a central lesson from maternal mortality research: deaths around the shift into parenthood are often driven more by social vulnerability than biology, and many can be prevented. Yet paternal deaths are still largely not tracked or addressed. Previous research has found that father involvement is associated with better health outcomes for children and families, while father absence is linked to a range of negative outcomes for children.
Still, fatherhood appears to be protective
Although fathers in the study died more often from preventable causes than from some other causes, the scientists found that being a father was linked with lower death rates among all men in Georgia between 2017 and 2022.
After age 20, fathers consistently had lower death rates than men who were not fathers. Among men ages 30 to 34, for example, Georgia fathers had a death rate of 120 deaths per 100,000 men, compared with 231 deaths per 100,000 men among Georgia men who were not fathers.
“Being a father appears to be protective in this particular group of men,” Garfield said. “We were surprised to see reduced mortality among men who are fathers. Whether that is due to changes in lifestyle or a new purpose or new roles and responsibilities, we don’t know, but it is certainly worth further study.”
More about the study
The scientists reviewed all births in Georgia from 2017 through 2022 and connected those records with death records for fathers named on birth certificates. They examined causes of death, overall mortality rates, and whether fatherhood itself appeared to change men’s risk of dying.
Non-natural deaths were more common among younger fathers. Births paid for by Medicaid and unmarried status were associated with higher homicide risk. Fathers who died were more likely to have been older, non-Hispanic Black, unmarried, living in rural areas, and connected to Medicaid-paid births. Higher education, Hispanic ethnicity, and Tricare-paid births were linked with fewer deaths.
Experiences in the hospital inspired the work
Garfield, a pediatrician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, said his clinical experience helped motivate the study. He has seen many cases in which mothers in the neonatal intensive care unit were grieving the death of a partner from causes such as a shooting, car crash, or another sudden event.
“In my experience, that happens more often than mothers dying,” Garfield said. “The death of any parent has enormous consequences for a child, and as a pediatrician, I care most about how a parent’s death impacts the child, especially in the early years.”
Garfield has published dozens of papers on fathers’ mental and physical health, but he said he found little existing research on deaths among fathers in the years immediately after a child is born.
Why Georgia?
A national analysis of paternal mortality is not currently possible. Birth and death data are gathered by states, but when the information is compiled nationally, personally identifiable details are removed. That makes it impossible to determine individual cause of death and many other key factors. Garfield and team were able to use Georgia’s data through an existing project, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System for Dads (PRAMS for Dads survey), which they created and first piloted in Georgia in 2018.
He hopes the results will encourage other states to examine their own data, build a clearer state-by-state picture of paternal mortality, and eventually work together on a system for understanding this national issue.
“If we don’t measure it, we can’t change it,” Garfield said. “That affects thousands of children.”
Reference: “Paternal Mortality During Early Childhood” by Craig F. Garfield, Clarissa D. Simon, Chris Harrison, Michael Woods, Katy Bedjeti and John T. Carter, 4 May 2026, JAMA Pediatrics.
DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2026.1217
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