Presenting Author: Amelia Friche, PhD, Drexel University Urban Health Collaborative, Federal University of Minas Gerais

ABSTRACT

Background: A key to understanding the large social and health inequalities in Latin America is the ability to quantify the contributions of city and neighborhood-level factors to differences in mortality and health inequalities among and within cities in the region.

Objectives: To describe the data collection and quality assessment of mortality data of ten Latin American countries.

Methods: Representatives from each country answered a questionnaire death certificate content, data processing, cause-of-death coding, geographic location coding, and availability. Responses were collated and compared across countries

Results: All countries reported that mortality data is routinely collected and processed by health officials. Sex, age and basic causes defined by International Classification of Diseases were available in all countries. Education data, although available, was reported with incomplete coverage for most of countries, as well as race/ethnicity in five countries. Occupation and other social indicators (e.g., marital status) were reported for four countries as available with missingness. Four countries reported ill-defined causes were 2.3% to 10.0% of deaths. Historical mortality data from 1990 onward were available in 5 countries and 2000 or after in the other countries. Deidentified data is publicly available aggregated at municipality (or similar) in all countries. Five countries reported geocoded or residential data are available after ethics approval.

Implications: Mortality data by age, sex, cause and other variables are publicly available in many countries at a smaller geographic unit, such as municipality. These small-area data can provide better comparisons between and within countries to understand health inequalities. This methodology can be used in future mortality studies.

Authors: SALURBAL Investigators