Mortality Rates

Visualization Notes:

These are the 5 leading causes of death for Arizonans. While mortality rates have been declining in Arizona, men post higher mortality rates than women for all 5 of the leading causes of death.

Visualization Notes:

In most categories, the U.S. posts a higher mortality rate than Arizona. 2008 U.S. data is not yet available.

Visualization Notes:

In this time period, Alzheimer's disease replaced influenza and pneumonia as the fifth leading cause of death among females and both genders but not elderly males 65 years or older.

1. Rates are presented per 100,000 elderly persons 65 years and older.
2. These are the five greatest causes of death for those 65 years and older.

Note: The cause-of-death titles are according to the Tenth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10).  The causes of death for 2000-2008 are classified by ICD-10, replacing the Ninth Revision (ICD-9) used during 1979-1999.  The rates for both Alzheimer's disease and influenza and pneumonia for 1997-1999 are comparability modified and represent the annual number of deaths per 100,000 persons 65+ that would have been classified as influenza and pneumonia, had the ICD-10 classification system and coding rules been in place.  

The rates for 1997-1999 are based on the number of deaths according to ICD-9. The rates for 2000-2008 are based on the number of deaths according to ICD-10. For comparability, the rates for 1997-1999 are adjusted using the preliminary comparability ratio of 1.5536 from NCHS. Comparability ratio of 1.0 indicates that the same number of deaths was assigned to a cause of death whether ICD-9 or ICD-10 was used. (Quoted from the Elderly Mortality Report on Vital Statistics)