Mortality Data from the National Vital Statistics System
Mortality data include information on all deaths occurring within the United States. Deaths of U.S. citizens and deaths of members of the Armed Forces occurring outside the United States are not included.
Conditions related to injury can be described in two ways: (1) external cause of injury and (2) the nature of the injury. External cause codes describe the mechanism or cause of the injury (e.g., motor vehicle crash) and the manner or intent of the injury (e.g., unintentional). The nature of injury codes describe the body region or site of the injury (e.g., hip) and the diagnosis (e.g., fracture).
Most mortality statistics are presented based on the underlying cause of death. The underlying cause of death is defined as "(a) the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death, or (b) the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury." In the case of an injury-related death, the underlying cause of death is always an external cause. It thus provides information about the circumstances that lead to death, which is generally considered to be the most useful single cause from a public health standpoint.
ICD-10 Selected Causes of Death Lists
Cause-of-death ranking is a useful tool for illustrating the relative burden of cause-specific mortality. Procedures for ranking causes of death are described on page 2 under Data and Methods, Procedures for ranking causes of death in Deaths: Leading Causes for 2002.
This is the second of an annual summary of injury mortality data; it is released as a supplemental report to the year's final data.
Contact: Lois Fingerhut, Robert Anderson, and Arialdi Minino
Beginning with data year 2001, this is the first of an annual summary of injury mortality data; it is released as a supplemental report to the year's final data.
Contact: Lois Fingerhut and Robert Anderson
In 2002 unintentional injury was the 5th leading cause of death, intentional self-harm (suicide) was the 11th leading cause of death, and assault (homicide) was the 13th leading cause of death.
Tables with injury and poisoning deaths and rates
These reports present final 2001-2002 data on the 10 leading causes of death in the United States by age, race, sex, and Hispanic origin.
Detailed mortality tables include data on age, race, sex, cause-of-death, life expectancy, and infant mortality. Some of the tables present national-level data, others feature State-level data:
Mortality Data, Multiple-Cause-of-Death - Multiple Cause-of-Death data are collected annually. The link provides access to both documentation and data for multiple cause of death files from 1968-2005
For questions about public-use data files contact:
Phone: 301-458-4666
Fax: 301-458-4034
The ICD-10 External Cause Matrix emphasizes the mechanism or cause of the injury and places secondary emphasis on the manner or intent of the injury. The ICD-10 injury mortality framework was developed to be as consistent as possible with the recommended framework developed based on the ICD-9 external cause of injury codes.
ICD-10 Framework for Injury Mortality Diagnosis Matrix
The ICD-10 Injury Mortality Diagnosis (IMD) matrix is a framework designed to organize injury diagnosis mortality data into meaningful groupings by body region and nature of injury.
The ICD-9 External Cause Matrix emphasizes the mechanism or cause of the injury and places secondary emphasis on the manner or intent of the injury.
The 2006 NCHS Urban-Rural Classification scheme data file classifies each of the 3,141 U.S. counties/county equivalent into an organization level (four metropolitan, 2 nonmemtropolitan).
Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) is an interactive querying tool that provides customized reports of injury-related data (years 1981-most recent year available).
CDC WONDER has both numerical and textual databases. Some of these databases contain read-only information on morbidity, mortality, hospitalizations, surveillance of notifiable diseases, and CDC reports and guidelines. The Compressed Mortality File includes mortality data for years 1979-most recent year available.
Special Projects Branch
Office of Analysis and Epidemiology
NCHS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Mailstop P08
nchsinjury@cdc.gov
National Center for Health
Statistics
3311 Toledo Road
Hyattsville, MD 20782
Phone:
1-800-232-4636
nchsquery@cdc.gov
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA 30333, U.S.A
Tel: (404) 639-3311 / Public Inquiries: (404) 639-3534 / (800) 311-3435