2B.
L
EADING
C
AUSESOF
D
EATH
In 2010, the Office of Vital Records (OVR) of the Arizona Department of Health Services implemented the new (2003)
Standard U.S. death certificate. The new certificate added several new questions: 1) whether tobacco use contributed to the
death, and 2) whether, if the decedent was a female, the death was ?pregnancy-associated? (defined as death from any
cause during pregnancy or within one calendar year of delivery or pregnancy termination).
The death certificate now includes a new classification of the decedent?s racial/ethnic status, consistent with the revised
federal standards for collecting and reporting racial and ethnic status. These standards were published in the Federal
Register on October 30, 1997, as ?Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity?.
The revised standards are available on the OMB (the Office of Management and Budget) web-site at:
There are now 15 racial categories (including Guamanian or Chamorro; Samoan or Native Hawaiian) to choose from. It is
also permitted to indicatemore than one race for a decedent. In 2013, among the 49,929 deaths of Arizona residents,
indication of ?two or more races? appeared on only 398 certificates. The total number of deaths for decedents identified as
Native Hawaiianwas 15. To create frequency counts of race and ethnicity that were adequate to compute statistically
reliablemortality rates, race was ?bridged?, or essentially collapsed into 5 categories;White non-Hispanic, Hispanic or
Latino, Black or African American, Native American, and Asian or Pacific Islander. When an individual was identified as both
Hispanic and any other race, that personwas added to the racial/ethnic groupwith the lowest population. For example, a
person identified as bothWhite and Hispanic would be coded as Hispanic, where a person identified as American Indian and
Hispanic would be coded as American Indian. Please refer to the technical appendix for further explanation of the racial
bridging used in this report.
Arizona Health Status and Vital Statistics 2013
109
