Weekly U.S. Death Counts by Jurisdiction and Cause

U.S. mortality data provides weekly counts of deaths by jurisdiction of occurrence and selected underlying causes. The dataset focuses on Respiratory diseases, Circulatory diseases, Malignant neoplasms, and Alzheimer disease and dementia, excluding COVID-19 and external causes. It is published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services but is no longer updated as of September 27, 2023.

Use Cases

• Compare weekly death counts for Respiratory diseases and Circulatory diseases across different jurisdictions to identify anomalous mortality patterns.
• Analyze trends in deaths attributed to Alzheimer disease and dementia by jurisdiction to assess public health impacts over time.
• Investigate potential misclassification or indirect effects by studying mortality counts for Malignant neoplasms in the context of health system strain.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, an authoritative national health agency.
• Focuses on four major cause-of-death categories (Respiratory, Circulatory, Malignant neoplasms, Alzheimer/dementia) relevant for mortality analysis.
• Provides weekly granularity for temporal analysis of death trends.

Limitations

• The dataset is no longer updated as of September 27, 2023, limiting its use for current analysis.
• Excludes deaths with COVID-19 as the underlying cause and deaths from external causes, which may limit completeness for certain studies.
• The exact row count, column structure, and temporal coverage are not specified in the provided input.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Collection Method

Based on analyses of death certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), focusing on underlying cause of death.

Freshness

Last updated 2025-04-23, but data production ceased on 2023-09-27.

Geography

United States, including jurisdictions like Puerto Rico as indicated by tags.