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Identifying whether the vital events occurring to Arizona’s Native American population were to those living on tribal reservations has posed a
persistent challenge. Beginning with the first edition of this report published in 1995, vital events occurring on reservation were identified by place of
residence. From 2002 - 2009, tribal affiliation combined with a specific place of residence was used in order to distinguish between American Indian
residents of specified tribal communities and/or on reservations, and those who resided off reservation. Starting in 2010, the identification of events
occurring on or off tribal lands was based solely on whether or not the individual’s residence address was within the boundaries of a tribal reservation.
While identifying a somewhat smaller number of on-reservation vital events than in previous years, this method provides a stricter definition of
whether a specific vital event occurred to a Native American living within the boundaries of a reservation, and is also more reliable and reproducible
than the method incorporating both residence address and tribal affiliation to identify on-reservation events. Future editions of the report will also use
residence as the sole identifier of on-reservation vital events. Due to this change in methodology, the counts of vital events occurring on-or-
off reservation in 2013 should not be directly compared to on-or-off reservation counts from years prior to 2010, specifically counts in
Sections IV and V (excluding Section V Comparative Cause-Specific Mortality).
The Health Status Profile of American Indians in Arizona: 2013 Data Book includes tables where small cells and related totals are suppressed. Using
suppression rules similar to those used by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), this report now attempts to maintain the anonymity of the
individuals whose vital records are summarized herein. In cell suppression, the first task is primary suppression, or removing non-zero counts in the
body of a table that fall below a certain number. Primary cells that were less than six but greater than zero were suppressed and identified with an
asterisk (*). Next, secondary suppression is used to obfuscate the totals or sums with components, or addends that fall below the threshold for
primary suppression. These totals are typically reported in the margins of table rows and columns. Column or row totals that contained a non-zero
addend less than 6 were rounded to the nearest tens-unit and identified with a dagger (†). In certain cases where these rules would have dictated the
rounding of a row or column total but the value of the information contained in the total was identified as important or attainable from other sources,
these rules were relaxed and the original value was reported.
Health Status Profile of American Indians in Arizona was intended as a data book: a basic reference for some of the most frequently requested vital
event statistics. The five sections of the report were computer-generated and contain information with little or no accompanying narrative.
The online versions of the report for 1995–2013 are available at
2 Health Status Profile of American Indians in Arizona, 2013 Data Book