For example, if a resident of one county passes away in another county, the death will be counted in “Death by Residence” for the county where they reside. The death will also be counted in “Death by Occurrence” for the county where they passed. 

See Glossary Term(s): Place of Occurrence, Place of Residence

See Glossary Term(s): ​Data De-identification Guidelines (DDG)

The Office of Health Equity may have recent research on heat related deaths. 

The coroner investigation into the causes of death that are due to external factors, such as extreme heat events, can take months to finalize with updated ICD-10 codes depending on the workload of the local coroner/medical examiner offices. If other jurisdictions are providing real-time data on heat-related deaths, these data are not derived from death certificate data but from an alternative data source, such as syndromic surveillance data systems. 

Deaths involving injuries from external or environmental forces, such as heat-related deaths, often require additional investigation into the cause of death. While deaths must be registered locally within 8 days of death, such records have a “Pending” cause of death listed. After the death investigation is completed, the cause of death section is updated by the death certifier. Therefore, there are deaths that will ultimately have a specific cause listed but have a “Pending” cause until the update occurs. This situation can result in significant underreporting of heat-related deaths in provisional data. For example, a heat-related death that occurred on July 1 and registered with a “Pending” cause of death on July 2, and not updated to a more specific “Hyperthermia” cause until August 1 would not be identified as a “heat-related” death until August 1, even though it was registered, and fact of death was known for the preceding month. For more information on reporting delays see “Timeliness of Death Certificate Data for Mortality Surveillance and Provisional Estimates” (PDF) from the National Center for Health Statistics. CDC guidance on certification of death in event of disaster, including extreme heat events can be found: A Reference Guide for Certification of Deaths in the Event of a Natural, Human-induced, or Chemical/Radiological Disaster (PDF).

If you require additional data, two other resources are available:

1. Submit an electronic Research Project Application to receive data as a separate line item through the CDPH Vital Statistics Applications (VSA) Submission System. CDPH VSA allows requesters to submit vital statistics applications online, review all associated forms and documents, and determine the status of an application. More information can be found in the CDPH VSA Manual (PDF). Utilize the CDPH VSA website to create an account. Research applications require approval from the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS). The entire application process can take approximately 2-4 months after CDPH receives a complete application package.

2. Submit a request for tabulated data through CDPH VSA. Generally, tabular applications are fulfilled within three months of receiving payment. A tabulated datafile will provide a table of counts grouped by a criterion of interest (i.e., aggregated data). The tabulated data cannot include any personal identifiers. 

Please note, to protect the privacy of individuals, CDPH follows the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) Data De-Identification Guidelines (DDG) when preparing a tabulated data table. As a result, counts less than 11 may be suppressed to protect privacy, and additional suppression may be applied to complementary cells to prevent the inference of the values of suppressed cells.

Creation of custom data files are subject to cost recovery pursuant to the California Health and Safety Code Section 102230. CDPH will provide a cost and time estimate once the application has been received and reviewed.

Please refer to the data source comparison charts posted on Data Types and Limitations for updated year availability and detailed data source descriptions.

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All Vital Records Business Intelligence System (VRBIS) data fields, except the causes of death, are based on registration data and refreshed every 30 minutes. Therefore, for all data use other than cause of death, the data are complete, final, and coded in near real time. The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) codes all cause of death according to the International Classification of Diseases, version 10 for Mortality (ICD-10) using the literal text from the death certificate. Once coded, the cause of death codes is​​ provided to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) by NCHS. CDPH sends registered deaths to NCHS every day (more than 1,000/day, referred to as a batch). Between 70% and 80% of death records can be coded automatically by NCHS and returned to CDPH within a few days of state registration. Anywhere between 20% and 30% of records will have to be manually reviewed before NCHS can assign a cause of death code. These records can take up to several months to be returned to CDPH with a cause of death code. The records that require manual review are sent back to CA once the last record in the batch is processed.

The coded cause of death is based on information provided on the death certificate or on amendments to the certificate. Coroners may indicate “pending” for cause of death until they make a determination. These are coded as “unknown” by NCHS until the coroner provides specific information. The law does not set a required time frame in which coroners must make this determination, and it is not unusual for it to take many months for coroners to finalize the cause of death on the death certificate through the amendment process.

The completeness of cause of death will increase with the interval between registration and data file creation. A monthly file prepared in the month following registration includes all cases registered up to the month of registration and all data fields will have a data value, but that data value may be changed subsequently through the amendment process. A file created three months after the month of registration will be more “final,” in that many amendments, including updates to cause of death, will have been applied. A file created six months after registration will be even more “final,” in that even more amendments and updates will have occurred.

• County Health Status Profiles

• Statewide Death Profiles

• Statewide Live Birth Profiles

• Death Profiles by County

• Live Birth Profiles by County

• Death Profiles by ZIP Code

• Live Birth Profiles by ZIP Code
  

• Death Profiles by Leading Causes of Death
  

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