Category: Uncategorized

Motor Vehicle Deaths

The recent news that Paul Walker, the star of the “Fast & Furious” movie series, was killed in a car crash has generated  interest from the public into data on motor vehicle fatalities. Though the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the main source of information about traffic accidents and fatalities in the U.S., the Read More >

Pregnancy Rates for U.S. Women Continue to Drop

NCHS has released a report that provides a comprehensive picture of pregnancies and pregnancy outcomes.  Pregnancy rates for women in the United States continued to decline in 2009, reaching the lowest level in 12 years (102.1 per 1,000 women aged 15–44). This level is 12% below the 1990 peak (115.8). The estimated number of pregnancies Read More >

More Than 6% of U.S. Adolescents Take Psychotropic Drugs

A new report released by NCHS provides the estimate of any psychotropic medication use in the past month among U.S. noninstitutionalized adolescents aged 12–19 during 2005–2010, using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Psychotropic medication is a type of drug used to treat clinical psychiatric symptoms or mental disorders. Specific psychotropic drug types Read More >

More Drug Overdose Deaths in Rural America Than Urban Counties

Drug overdose deaths are on the rise, and from 1999 to 2009 rural U.S. counties saw a larger jump in these drug-poisoning deaths than their urban counterparts. While the highest death rates were seen in central metropolitan areas during this period, the rate grew by 394% in rural counties compared to a 279% spike for large Read More >

Dementia Special Care Units at Residential Care Communities

Assisted living and similar residential care communities provide an alternative to nursing homes for individuals with dementia who can no longer live independently. In 2010, about 42% of individuals living in residential care communities had Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. Individuals with dementia can live in residential care communities that have dementia special care units, Read More >

Statistics on Statin Use

High cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for both men and women.  Nearly 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths.  Every year about 715,000 Americans have a heart attack and the costs of coronary heart disease alone costs the Read More >

Director’s Corner—The Importance of Privacy

With all the recent concerns about the collection and use of information gathered by the National Security Agency and other agencies both public and private, I think it is an appropriate time to go over the responsibilities of a federal statistical agency like NCHS. NCHS and all other federal statistical agencies are governed by four Read More >

During 1999–2010, a total of 49,762 deaths from drowning occurred in the United States, an average of 4,147 deaths per year. Summer is particularly a high-risk time of year for drowning, with July being the peak month (8,683 drowning deaths in July during 1999-2010 – an average of nearly 724 drowning deaths every July). Males Read More >

Prescription Sleep Aid Use

According to estimates, 50–70 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders or deprivation, which can not only hinder daily functioning, but can also adversely affect their health.  Prescription sleep aids are one of the treatment options for trouble going into or maintaining sleep. However, long-term use of sleep aids has been linked to adverse outcomes in Read More >

Reflections of an International Statistician

By Dr. Pavlina Rumcheva, Senior Service Fellow NCHS Office of Research and Methodology I will tell a brief story about my life as a statistician around the world. My starting point was the city of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. I was born and grew up there, and lived there during my high school and Read More >

Dr. Nat Schenker Serves Statistics as ASA President-Elect

As director of the Office of Research and Methodology, Dr. Nathaniel Schenker spends his working days absorbed in the details of the world of statistics, with emphasis on how they apply to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Outside of the office? He spends more time on the world of statistics, but with a more global view. Read More >

Ask the Expert: LCDR Erin Nichols, Verbal Autopsy

[Editor’s Note: NCHS’s International Statistics Program collaborates with domestic and international partners in many public health projects around the world. We spoke with epidemiologist LCDR Erin Nichols about one of the program’s more ambitious projects: verbal autopsy.]   Q. How did the verbal autopsy project come about, and who you will be working with? A. Read More >

NCHS Undertakes Systematic Evaluation of Major Programs

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is responsible for monitoring the nation’s health. To make sure that its programs are on target to do so requires evaluation and advice from the broader scientific community. The Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) is a committee charged with providing advice and making recommendations to the secretary of Read More >

Birth Numbers Continue to Decline

NCHS has released a report that presents 2011 data on U.S. births according to a wide variety of characteristics.  The vast majority of these findings were previously published in October 2012 in “Births: Preliminary Data for 2011.” Findings that were not in the preliminary report: The 2011 twin birth rate was 33 per 1,000 total Read More >

QDRL Works with Federal Agencies to Evaluate Blood Donation Procedures

An integral element of the Office of Research and Methodology’s (ORM) mission is to work with other federal statistical agencies to develop and test survey instruments. To that end, in 1985, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) created the Questionnaire Design Research Laboratory (QDRL). Recent projects include examining alternatives to sexual identification questions used in NCHS’s Read More >

NHIS Report on Health Insurance Coverage

NCHS has released a report on selected estimates of health insurance coverage for the civilian noninstitutionalized U.S. population based on data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. Key Findings from the Report: • In 2012, 45.5 million persons of all ages were uninsured at the time of interview, 57.7 million  had been uninsured for at Read More >

Smoking on the Decline, Data From the 2012 National Health Interview Survey Show

Fewer than 1 in 5 American adults now smoke, according to new data just released from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). An estimated 18% of people in the U.S. age 18 and over are current smokers, down significantly from the 25% who were smokers a decade and a half ago – and down Read More >

Number of American Homes with only Wireless Telephones Growing

The trend towards ditching our landline telephones continues, according to a new report from NCHS. Nearly two in every five American homes had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) during the second half of 2012—an increase of 2.4 percentage points since the first half of 2012. In addition, Read More >

Advancing the State of Methodological Knowledge

By thinking small, Dr. Nathaniel Schenker hopes that he and his associates will make a big contribution in the fight against cancer. Dr. Schenker is director of the Office of Research and Methodology (ORM), which serves as the central methodological research, development, and consulting unit for the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). ORM provides Read More >

Families Who Have Problems Paying Medical Bills

NCHS has released a report on comparable estimates for the percentage of persons under age 65 who were in families having problems paying medical bills, by selected demographic variables based on data from three consecutive 6-month periods from January–June 2011 to January–June 2012 of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). In this report, an NHIS Read More >

Health Behaviors of Adults

NCHS has put out a new report that presents selected prevalence estimates for five key health behaviors among adults — alcohol use, cigarette smoking, leisure-time physical activity, body mass index, and sufficient sleep.  The report is based on a total of 76,669 completed interviews with a sample of adults aged 18 and over covering the Read More >

Information on Tornado Deaths

Though CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics does not have specific data on tornado deaths, we do have data from our mortality database on deaths from “cataclysmic storms,” which includes tornado deaths (International Classification of Diseases Code X-37). This specific ICD code includes blizzards, hurricanes and tornadoes, but doesn’t separate deaths by tornadoes alone. Below Read More >

Food and Skin Allergies Increase in Children

Allergic conditions are among the most common medical conditions affecting children in the United States. An allergic condition is a hypersensitivity disorder in which the immune system reacts to substances in the environment that are normally considered harmless. Food or digestive allergies, skin allergies (such as eczema), and respiratory allergies (such as hay fever) are Read More >

Sondik to Step Down as NCHS Director

HYATTSVILLE, MD – The Director of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Dr. Edward J. Sondik, has announced that he will be leaving NCHS at the end of April.  Charles J. Rothwell, currently the Center’s Director of Vital Statistics, began as Acting Director of NCHS on April 1, 2013, as CDC searches for a Read More >

Trends in Inpatient Hospital Deaths

NCHS has released a report that presented National Hospital Discharge Survey data from 2000 through 2010 on patients who died while being hospitalized. In 2000, there were 2.4 million deaths in the United States, and in 2010 there were 2.5 million. In both years, about one-third of these deaths occurred in short-stay, general hospitals, despite research Read More >