PlainHealth publishes a mortality profile for every U.S. state and every leading cause of death in the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Leading Causes of Death dataset — built entirely from official CDC data. This page explains how those pages are produced, what standards they are held to, and how to report a number that looks wrong so we can fix it at the source.

How these pages are produced

Every death count and age-adjusted rate on PlainHealth originates in an official CDC dataset. We download the published NCHS Leading Causes of Death files and the age-adjusted rates from CDC WONDER, load them through a documented, version-controlled data pipeline, and render them into cause, state, ranking, and trend pages using shared templates. No mortality page is hand-written, and no death count or rate is typed in by an editor. Each figure you see is read directly from the official CDC source record at build time.

Our editorial team is responsible for the parts a pipeline cannot decide on its own: which datasets to use, how each metric is defined and labeled, what the methodology says, how derived measures (such as a national average or a state-versus-fleet comparison) are computed, which guides and explainers we write, and what we will not publish. The pipeline then applies those decisions uniformly across every state and cause, so the rule that governs one page governs all of them.

Sourcing standards

We publish only data that comes from official government sources, and we name the source on every page. Our data is:

• NCHS Leading Causes of Death (1999–2017): the final, age-adjusted mortality series published by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, built from finalized death certificates and standardized cause-of-death coding, organized into the 10 leading causes. It is the source for every death count and cause breakdown on the site.
• CDC WONDER, Underlying Cause of Death: the source of the age-adjusted rates, standardized to the year 2000 U.S. standard population so states with different age structures can be compared fairly.

We do not scrape third-party sites, we do not republish unofficial estimates as our own, and we do not assign our own health or risk scores. Where a figure is derived from the official data (for example, a national average rate or a state-to-state comparison), the page links to our methodology, which sets out exactly how it is calculated.

Accuracy and validation

Because the numbers are read straight from CDC files, the most common limitation is the underlying data itself rather than a transcription error. Death certificates list a single underlying cause; the 10 leading-cause chapters are a deliberately broad rollup; and the finalized series currently ends in 2017. Our pipeline applies systematic checks before a value is published: it presents counts and rates exactly as the source published them, shows a value as unavailable when the source suppresses or omits it (never treating a suppressed cell as a zero), and reconciles state, cause, and year rollups so the same figure is consistent wherever it appears.

When we find that a displayed number is wrong, we fix the cause, not the symptom. We trace the value back to the data layer, correct the derivation or labeling rule there, and regenerate the affected pages, so the same class of error is resolved everywhere at once rather than patched on a single page.

Editorial independence

PlainHealth does not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from any organization in exchange for how data is presented. We do not assign our own ratings or endorsements. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense. Advertisers have no influence over which data we cover, how a cause or state is reported, or how any page ranks.

Update schedule

CDC publishes finalized mortality data on a lag — typically two to three years after the reference year. We refresh our database when CDC extends the finalized, age-adjusted leading-cause series and re-stamp the affected pages so the published date reflects when the data genuinely changed. We intentionally do not display provisional later years, which lack the complete, comparable age-adjusted rates this site relies on.

Corrections process

If a figure looks wrong, please tell us. We treat data-error reports as a priority and follow the same process every time:

1. Report. Email hello@plainhealthdata.com with the page URL and the figure you are questioning.
2. Verify. We check the value against the official CDC NCHS source record for that state, cause, and year.
3. Fix at the source. If the figure is wrong on our side, we correct the underlying data or derivation rule and regenerate every page it affects.
4. Note it. If the figure is correct but reflects a known limitation — a coarse cause rollup, a coding change, or the 2017 cutoff — we explain the caveat rather than silently changing it.

Some apparent errors trace back to the CDC record itself. When that is the case, we will tell you so and, where possible, point you to the official CDC WONDER database so you can verify it directly.

Contact

Questions about our standards, methodology, or a specific figure are welcome at hello@plainhealthdata.com. For more on what the data covers and how it is processed, see our About page and methodology. For how to interpret mortality statistics responsibly, see our disclaimer.