SOURCESOFDATA
Information on births, deaths, and fetal deaths is
compiled from the original documents filed with the
Arizona Department of Health Services? Office of Vital
Records and from transcripts of original birth and death
certificates filed in other states but affecting Arizona
residents (copies of certificates for births, deaths, and
fetal deaths occurring to Arizona residents outside the
United States are not sent to Arizona).
Information on induced terminations of pregnancy
(abortions) performed on Arizona women is compiled
from reports sent to the Arizona Department of Health
Services by facilities within but only rarely outside the
state.
Pregnancies are the sum of live births, spontaneous
terminations of pregnancy (fetal deaths or stillbirths),
and abortions.
Arizona has no central registry for marriage and divorce
records. Statistics are limited to counts of marriages and
divorces reported monthly by the Clerk of the Superior
Court in each county in which the marriage or divorce
occurred. These reports contain no demographic data on
the peoplemarrying or divorcing.
Data on morbidity, levels of disease and disability in the
population, are obtained for certain infectious diseases
that must be reported by law. The ADHS Epidemiology
and Disease Control Services conduct surveillance and
monitoring of these reportable diseases and provided
data for themorbidity sections in this report.
All State-licensed nonfederal hospitals in Arizona are
required to submit uniform patient reports to the Arizona
Department of Health Services every six months.
Beginning in 2010 the psychiatric hospitals also are
subject to reporting requirements. The Section of Cost
Reporting and Discharge Data Review in the Bureau of
Public Health Statistics collect the information about both
hospital inpatient discharges and emergency room visits.
Population denominators for Arizona residents, used to
calculate rates for 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010, are
census enumerations from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Population denominators for the intercensal years utilize
the best available data sources. They are described in
detail at
/
Our website at
/
provides
additional reports and studies, as well as links to other
sources of information on topics such as morbidity from
certain diseases or population composition.
DEFINITIONS
UrbanandRural Areas
For the purpose of this report, the following are Arizona?s
urban areas
: Phoenix-Scottsdale-Mesa Metropolitan
Statistical Area (Maricopa and Pinal Counties), Tucson
Metropolitan Statistical Area (Pima County), and Yuma
Metropolitan Statistical Area (Yuma County). The
remaining counties (Apache, Cochise, Coconino, Gila,
Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Mohave, Navajo, Santa Cruz,
and Yavapai) comprise Arizona's
rural areas
.
Race/Ethnicity
Racial/ethnic designations used in this report are White
non-Hispanic, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African-
American, American Indian or Alaska Native (including
Aleut and Eskimo), and Asian or Pacific Islander
(including Hawaiian). In some of the trend tables the
designation "Other" includes Asian and Pacific Islanders
for years prior to 2012. Non-White Hispanics are included
in their appropriate race groups.
The American Indian figures include those living both on
and off the reservation.
The race/ethnicity of mother, father, or decedent is as
stated on the certificate.
This year?s report includes a new method of combining,
or bridging, race/ethnicity for individuals identified as
both Hispanic and one other race. This new method
allows us to match the categories of race/ethnicity used
by the Arizona Department of Administration to create
the population projections used as denominators in this
report, as well as to createmoremeaningful racial/ethnic
categories by placing individuals identified with both race
and ethnicity into the group representing a smaller
proportion of Arizona?s population. In previous reports,
individuals who identified as both Hispanic and any other
race were identified as Hispanic. This year, individuals
identified as Hispanic plus another race are include in the
racial/ethnic category with the lowest population in the
state. This approach to bridging is defined as the smallest
group deterministic whole method. In this method,
individuals identified as both White and Hispanic are
classified as Hispanic, where individuals identified as
Hispanic and any other race (Black or African American,
American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian or Pacific
Islander) are categorized by their racial identification.
Race/ethnicity was bridged in the birth, death, and fetal
death data, but was left un-bridged in the abortion and
HDD data to allow comparison with other reports using
differing racial/ethnic categorization.
Rates
Rate is a measure of the frequency of some event in
relation to a unit of population during a specified time
period such as a year; events in the numerator of the
year occur to individuals in the denominator. Rates
express the likelihood (or risk) of the event in the
specified population during a particular time and are
generally expressed as units of population in the
denominator (per 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and so forth).
Many rates shown in this report are based on a small
population, a small number of events, or both. Rates
based on small numbers are unreliable and thus should
be viewed with caution. Rates for many counties or
Arizona's ethnic minorities also vary considerably from
year to year due to small populations and few events.
Finally, the difference in methods used to calculate
population denominators can lead to variation in rates
that do not accurately reflect changes in the number of
events occurring in the population. We recommend
analyzing the underlying counts for each event before
interpreting variation in rates from 2011 to 2012.
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Arizona Health Status and Vital Statistics 2013
