There is considerable heterogeneity in the quality of cause-of-death statistics across Brazilian regions, especially for criteria such as completeness and ill-defined causes. These factors can influence generalizability and validity of reported causes of death, and must be considered in the interpretation and use of data for secondary descriptive analyses such as burden of disease estimation at regional level, with suitable adjustments to account for bias. The differences identified in this study could be a useful guide for defining measures and investments needed to improve data quality in Brazil.
Our findings provide evidence that the training of the epidemiological surveillance teams in the investigation and certification of causes of death could contribute to improve the quality of mortality data.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.