While premature deaths across the country are increasing primarily because of more drug overdoses, Mississippi managed to avoid that national trend by seeing improvements with decreases in deaths throughout a number of counties across the state. That’s according to an annual analysis of county health data compiled by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute released this week. The analysis found significant increases in premature deaths between 2014 and 2015 across the country as a whole, with 85 percent of the increase coming from deaths among 15 to 44 year olds.