Methodology

Design rules

1. Prefer machine-readable CDC/NCHS releases and NCHS data briefs with explicit tables.
2. Keep mortality, incidence, and prevalence on separate charts unless the source itself combines them with clear labels.
3. Never invent a missing year. Gaps stay gaps.
4. Mark ICD, survey, and case-definition breaks instead of drawing one pretend-smooth line.
5. Distinguish the observation period (when deaths or exams occurred) from the retrieval/build date of this site.
6. Use age-adjusted rates for long mortality comparisons when NCHS publishes them.

Current build

Processed dataset manifest timestamp (UTC): 2026-11-05T22:24:41Z.

Refresh command rebuilds pages from data/raw and data/processed. Annual vital statistics are not live feeds; after a new NCHS release, re-run the refresh and verify tables before publishing.

Known limitations of this launch set

• CDC WONDER automated queries returned errors from this build environment; recent mortality extensions use published NCHS Data Brief tables instead.
• Long mortality charts mark the 1933 shift to complete U.S. registration and the 1999 ICD-10 transition; earlier ICD revisions can also create jumps. Pre-1999 points come from NCHS historical materials (portal file) and should be read as NCHS trend indexes, not as proof of identical methods across every decade.
• Mortality pages state the latest final year in this series (currently 2024 from Data Brief 548). That is not a claim that every national tabulation has been exhausted.
• The CDC TB HTML table returned HTTP 403 to direct curl from the build host; values were curated from a successful fetch of the same official URL and saved with provenance notes under data/raw/.
• SEER cancer incidence is not included in this launch to avoid mixing incidence into mortality charts. It can be added later as a separate topic with its own definitions.
• External-cause breakouts use NCHS Data Brief 526 (final 2003–2023). Mechanism series are nested under intent; this site does not invent all-intent firearm or all-intent overdose totals from those tables.
• The Projections page shows Census 2023 National Population Projections (life expectancy and all-cause deaths). It does not publish cause-specific future forecasts; none matching our observed series were found from CDC/NCHS. Projected and observed values are styled and labeled separately.
• Google AdSense publisher code and ads.txt are installed for publisher ca-pub-4447435649091319. Site approval, Auto ads placement, and Privacy & messaging consent still need to be configured in the AdSense account; installation alone does not mean ads are approved or visible yet.