Editorial Process
plainhealthdata is published from official CDC data by a documented pipeline, under standards our editorial process sets and maintains. Every figure is read directly from the CDC National Center for Health Statistics source record, the complete 9,690-record mortality grid spanning all 50 states, DC, and the years 1999 through 2017, and every methodology choice is documented. This is the team accountable for the data framing, methodology, and corrections you read here.
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Causes of Death Editorial Process · CDC NCHS mortality data analysis
PlainHealth is a data journalism portal that examines causes-of-death data from the CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The team draws from the public NCHS Leading Causes of Death dataset (1999-2017), with age-adjusted rates from CDC WONDER, to produce clear state-level cause-of-death analyses. Content is compiled by our editorial process from official source data, and the team maintains independence by not accepting payment from any entity.
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plainhealthdata is a data-journalism publisher: we compile public datasets, verify them against their official sources, and present them in plain language. Every figure on this site is checked against the CDC National Center for Health Statistics, a complete 9,690-record mortality grid of 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the years 1999 through 2017 (10 NCHS leading-cause chapters, not the full ICD-10 set), retrieved from the CDC WONDER Underlying Cause of Death database. According to that source, the United States recorded 2,081,531 deaths across the 10 leading causes in 2017. Editorial standards, sourcing, and how we handle corrections are described on our about and methodology pages.
Download the compiled NCHS mortality extract: cdc-nchs-leading-causes.csv (same extract as /statistics).