Vital Statistics: Redacted Death Certificate Literal Text File

At a glance

  • Researchers can access literal text fields from death certificates through the Research Data Center
  • These literal text fields are available in a redacted death certificate literal text file or a geography and date file.
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Overview

Part of the process of creating statistical data files includes accounting for conditions reported in the death certificate text sections. The National Center for Health Statistics translates this text, known as literal text, into medical codes from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Published by the World Health Organization, ICD codes promote international comparability in collecting, processing, classifying, and presenting mortality statistics.

In rare circumstances a name or location is written in the text portion of the death certificate, which could allow the individual to be personally identified. To protect the individual and to provide a rich source of information for public use, literal text fields have been redacted to remove these mentions from the original text as received from the states.

Researchers must submit an application to access redacted death certificate literal text files.

Data

Mortality data and documentation‎

Information on data collection, data processing, data analysis, and data access are available to researchers through the National Vital Statistics System.
Documentation

When a piece of personally identifiable information is found on a record that information is replaced with the following:

Replacement Text
Identifies
LOCATION
address, body of water, landmark, etc.
DATE
date of death, birth, etc.
NAME
first, last, or other name
IDENTIFIER
piece of unusual text or circumstance that could potentially identify the decedent

Accessing literal text fields

Researchers can access the literal text fields in the Research Data Center. Two files are available—

1. Redacted death certificate literal text file (LTF) which includes—

  • A single record for every death of a U.S. resident of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia
  • Demographic and cause-of-death variables from the National Vital Statistics System-Mortality (NVSS-M) files

2. A geography and date data file

Researchers will not be able to access the LTF together with the geography and date file. Researchers must first create a recode of verbatim cause of death text. The geography and date file will be merged with the recode file by the NCHS RDC analyst. The recode and merge will not be completed on the same day.

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