Overview

In the follow analysis, I will examine septicemia mortality in the United States by Race, Year and Geograpy from 1999-2014

Data Source

The Centers for Disease control and Prevention (CDC) hosts publicly available health data regarding several different topics on its CDC WONDER sites. For this analysis I will be using the Multiple Cause of Death (MCOD) data which is derived from the National Death Index, a database of all Death Certificates in the United States. Documentation for the MCOD dataset can be viewed here. For this exploratory analysis I used age-adjusted mortality rates per 100,000 person-years that is standardized to the 2000 US Census.

For causes of death, there are up to 20 potential causes of death listed on the death certificate. The first cause is designated as the Underlying Cause of Death (UCOD) while the others are all treated equally as MCODs. From death certificate to NDI database there is extensive data processing by the Mortality Medical Data System that is described by the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Heatlh Statistics. We defined a septicemia death as a death with an ICD-10 code from A40-A41 listed among any of the 20 possible causes of death on the processed death certificate. This is the same definition that the NVSS uses, but importantly does not include Influenza and Pneumonia.

ICD-10 Code Description
A40.0 Septicemia due to streptococcus, group A
A40.1 Septicemia due to streptococcus, group B
A40.2 Septicemia due to streptococcus, group C
A40.3 Septicemia due to streptococcal pneumonia
A40.8 Other streptococcal septicemia
A40.9 Streptococcal septicemia, unspecified
A41.0 Septicemia due to Staphylococcus aureus
A41.1 Septicemia due to other specified Staphylococcus
A41.2 Septicemia due to other unspecified Staphylococcus
A41.3 Septicemia due to Haemophilus influenzae
A41.4 Septicemia due to anaerobes
A41.5 Septicemia due to other Gram-negative organisms
A41.8 Other specified septicemia
A41.9 Septicemia, unspecified

Required R Packages

library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(choroplethr)
library(choroplethrMaps)

Analysis

By Race

By Race by Year

By State

By State Among Only Blacks

By State Among Only Whites

By State, SMRs of Blacks

SMR age-adjusted rate of Blacks of each state to National Average of 51.57 per 100,000

By State, SMR of Blacks Compared to Each State’s Average

By State, SMRs of Whites

SMR age-adjusted rate of Whites of each state to National Average of 51.57 per 100,000

SMR of Whites Compared to Each State’s Average

By State, SMR of Blacks Compared to Whites