These include the use of health services prior to death, socioeconomic status, aspects of life style, health care utilization prior to death, and other factors that may affect when and how death occurs.
Supplemental information is obtained from a variety of sources.
In the 1986 NMFS, additional information is collected from hospital and other health care facilities used in the last year of life. The foci of the each survey reflects current research interests and needs of the Public Health Service, other Federal agencies, and private health researchers in addressing salient issues related to health and mortality. A major objective of both the 1986 and 1993 NMFS is to examine the reliability of items reported on the death certificate by comparing these items with the same items reported by the survey proxy respondent. This includes age, race, gender, veteran status, education, occupation, and industry. NCHS does not distribute certificates, files, or indexes with indentifying information for deaths.