The Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program is the first national effort to create a network to provide the United States with standardized data integrated from multiple hazard, exposure, and health effects information systems. Limited Death Record Data from the Oregon Center of Health Statistics (CHS) Database are available on the National EPHT Network and on the Oregon EPHT website at http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/epht. The Oregon EPHT Death Records dataset contains categorical information about deaths to Oregon residents including sex, age group, infant age group, race, ethnicity, education, tobacco use, manner of death, and cause of death. Counts, percentages, and rates are available for deaths occurring after 1998, by state, county and year. Data from the EPHT network may be used to attempt to quantify the magnitude of environmental health problems, detect unusual trends and occurrences, document the distribution and spread of a hazard or health event, identify populations at risk, plan and evaluate protective and preventive measures, facilitate research, and detect the results of changes in health practices. The Oregon EPHT Program is part of a National EPHT Network sponsored by the CDC. The Oregon EPHT Program resides in the Toxicology, Assessment, and Tracking Section of the Office of Environmental Public Heath (OEPH) which is in the Public Health Division of the Department of Human Services (DHS).
The purpose of the Oregon EPHT Program is to provide scientific information from a web-based network of hazard, exposure, and health effect data to support actions that improve the health of communities. By bringing together, and standardizing, local, state, and national data sources of environmental and health information, scientists, policymakers, and the public will be able to more effectively address fundamental questions about relationships between environmental exposures and health effects.
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The Center for Health Statistics (CHS) is responsible for maintaining all Oregon death records. Oregon EPHT makes no representation or warranties regarding the completeness of data.
The Center for Health Statistics is responsible for maintaining approximately 6 million vital records. Birth and death records have been filed with the state since 1903. Marriage records have been filed since 1906, divorce records since 1925, and fetal death records since 1919. Death record data are available from 1989 to the present on a client server for public health surveillance by HIPPA-trained state employees. Data from earlier years (1958+) are stored on mainframe tapes/cartridges. Oregon law requires that vital events such as births, marriages, divorces, and deaths be recorded and registered. CHS is also responsible for compiling and analyzing the data from vital records. These data are used throughout the state and nation for program planning and policy development and are the primary data sources used for measuring many Oregon health benchmarks. Beginning in 2006, the death system was re-engineered to collect data through a web-based application. At the same time, the format and type of data collected changed to match the most recent standard set by the CDC in 2003. The most notable change was in the collection of education, Hispanic, and race categories. Records registered with the Center for Health Statistics are confidential by law. For Deaths, marriages, and divorces, the records are confidential for 50 years after the event occurred. Confidential means the records are released only to those people who have demonstrated a legal right to the information under ORS 432.121. Each request for vital records is screened for eligibility before the certified copy is produced. However, many tables of mortality data are readily available on the CHS website (http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/chs/index.shtml).
The Oregon Center for Health Statistics provides EPHT with secure access to de-identified Death Record Data. Oregon EPHT categorizes the data and aggregates by county, and year. Suppression rules are used to prevent specific data from being used to identify a particular individual. Suppression rules only apply to certain cells depending on time resolution, query and field (sensitive or not). Suppression applies if data are aggregated over less than 3 years (i.e., Most Recent Year OR Annual Trend over years OR Multiple Year Summary with Year Count <3) and the cell contains data from one of the following queries and specific subcategories from the listed fields. For Death Record data suppression rules apply if the cell contains a measure specific to one of the following subcategories or an aggregate of subcategories less than All (i.e. 'All selected categories' in the output): Tobacco Use, Manner of Death, and Cause of Death. If suppression applies, data will not be shown (count, rate, %) for a cell if the count for the cell (or numerator for rate) is less than 11 or the denominator population is less than 51. Rate estimations based on small case counts may be unstable. Independently of the user's selections, rates are flagged if based on a count (numerator) of less than 10.
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The limited de-identified and aggregated Death Record dataset available on the Oregon EPHT website contains the following categorical variables: Sex Age Group Infant Age Group Race Ethnicity Education Tobacco Use Manner of Death Cause of Death County Year
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In preparation of this data, every effort has been made to offer the most current, correct, complete and clearly expressed information possible. However, some errors in the data may exist. In particular, but without limitation, the EPHT Program and the Oregon Department of Human Services, Center for Health Statistics, disclaims any liability for compilation and typographical errors and accuracy of the information that may be contained in the data and reserves the right to make changes to data at any time without notice.
800 NE Oregon Street, Suite 640
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