Mortality is the most commonly used indicator of the severity of
health problems. The causes of death presented at this website are
either directly or indirectly associated with alcohol or drug abuse.
The number of alcohol or drug associated deaths was determined by applying a fraction that represents
the association that each cause of death has with alcohol or drugs.
An example of a death directly linked with alcohol abuse is alcohol
cirrhosis of the liver. This type of death is counted as one death in
computing the mortality rate. In contrast, a chronic pancreatitis
death is linked indirectly with alcohol abuse, and therefore is
counted as a fraction of a single death. Chronic pancreatitis was
assigned a fraction (.60 of a death) to represent the proportion of
pancreatitis deaths that are associated with prior alcohol abuse.
Deaths indirectly linked with substance abuse contribute significantly
to the overall proportion of deaths. If the death rate calculation
had been limited to causes that were directly related to substance
abuse, then many deaths indirectly related to alcohol and drugs would
have remained unrecognized. The alcohol and drug associated fractions
used for the mortality data came from The Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration.
Click here to see the alcohol and
drug-associated mortality fractions used at this website.
The registration of deaths is a state function. Physicians,
hospitals, laboratories and other health care entities are required to
submit death reports to the Indiana State Department of Health. All
deaths were classified according to codes in the World Health
Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases
(ICD). Deaths occurring from 1994 to 1998 used the version 9 codes;
deaths occurring since 1999 used the version 10 codes. To make the
categories comparable, a conversion table or crosswalk was developed
to match the ICD-9 categories with the ICD-10 categories. The
crosswalk is based on information from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. To view the crosswalk, click here:
ICD-9 & ICD-10 CROSSWALK
At this website, the prevalence of specific types of alcohol or drug
-related deaths are provided for the entire state by year.
Query the Mortality Data for the Entire State
Furthermore, alcohol and drug related mortality data can be viewed for
each Indiana county. At the county level, all types of
alcohol-related deaths shown for the state have been aggregated, as
well as a separate total of all types of drug related deaths.
Total alcohol and drug related deaths can be queried by year, across
years (1994-2000) by social demographics or age-adjusted.
Query the Mortality Data at the County Level
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