Coding for cause of death

Data on causes of death come from a database of death certificates, collected and maintained by the Minnesota Department of Health Center for Health Statistics. The primary cause of death is indicated by an International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of mortality statistics. The following are the ICD codes used in this report for classification of “cardiovascular disease,” “diseases of the heart,” (also referred to as “heart disease”) “coronary heart disease,” and “stroke.”

Age-adjustment methodology

Age-adjusting a rate is a way to make fairer comparisons between groups with different age distributions. For example, a county having a higher percentage of elderly people may have a higher rate of death than a county with a younger population, merely because the elderly are more likely to die. Age adjustment can make the different groups more comparable. A "standard" population distribution is used to adjust death rates. The age-adjusted rates are rates that would have existed if the population under study had been distributed by age the same way as in the "standard" population. Therefore, they are rates adjusted for differences in age distributions.

More information on age adjusting is available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statnt/statnt06rv.pdf and on Age Adjustment Using the 2000 Standard Population at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statnt/statnt20.pdf (Attention: Non-MDH link)


For information on when to use age-adjusted death rates, click here.
For more information on how to calculate age-adjusted death rates, click here