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Leading Causes of Death and Years of Potential Life Lost Module Help
The WISQARS' Leading Causes of Death and Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL) module is an interactive online system that provides public access to data from CDC's National Vital Statistics System (NVSS).
WISQARS Leading Causes of Death visualization shows the impact of injury-related deaths in the United States compared to other leading causes of death.
WISQARS YPLL visualization shows the impact of premature death resulting from injury compared to other leading causes of premature death.
The process for customizing queries and selecting output options is briefly described below.
Getting Started
To customize the visualizations displayed when you access the module, you will begin by clicking the "Change Filters" button near the top, right of the screen.
WISQARS™ Data Use Agreement
You are asked to agree to the terms of the WISQARS™ Data Use Agreement the first time you click on the "Change Filters" button. Click "I Agree" on the pop-up screen to accept the confidentiality terms for data usage and to continue to the "Data Filters" screen.
The Data Filters screen will allow you to make some key decisions about the data you want to view—such as data years, geography, and demographic variables—to create visualizations.
Some choices may affect the other data filter options that are available. For example, age options are only available when you select "Leading Causes of Death" under "Show As". Below is a list of the data options available.
Data Filters: Show As
This section allows you to specify if you want to see the leading causes of death or the years of potential life lost visualizations.
- Leading Causes of Death: This chart displays the major causes of death from greatest to least and highlights the role that injuries play in U.S. mortality. Colored boxes highlight injury deaths and by clicking on them you can see the number of injury deaths by underlying cause of death according to International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes.
- Years of Potential Life Lost: Years of potential life lost (YPLL) is a measure of premature mortality (early death) calculated by subtracting the age at death from the standard year (i.e., 65, 70, 75, 80, 85+) and then summing the individual YPLL across each cause of death. This chart displays the years of potential life lost due to major causes of death.
Data Filters: Year and Race Options
This option allows you to request leading causes of death or years of potential life lost by several race and ethnicity categories.
From data year 2001 to 2020, WISQARS used bridged race categories: White, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian/Pacific Islander.
Beginning with data year 2018, WISQARS leading causes of death and years of potential life lost include data for the current U.S. Census Bureau's six single race categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and More than One Race.
When requesting leading causes of death or year of potential life lost, users have the option to choose one of the following categories depending on the data year(s) and race categories they wish to view:
No Race Categories (available for data years 2001-present):
- 2001 – Present with No Race excludes race as a filter category so users can look at trends across all available data years. This is the default view.
Bridged Race Category (available for data years 2001-2020):
- 2001 – 2020 by Bridged Race allows you to see the previous bridged race categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Asian or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.
Single Race Categories (available for data years 2018-present):
- 2018 – 2021 by Single Race allows you to see the current six single race categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and More than One Race.
- 2018 – 2021 by Single Race (Asian/HI Native/Pacific Islander combined) allows you to see the current single race categories with Asian and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander as one combined race category.
Data Filters: Category of Causes
This option allows you to limit your leading causes of death or years of potential life lost charts to specific categories. You can choose between
- All Deaths.
- All Injuries.
- Unintentional Injuries.
- Violence-Related Injuries (consisting of suicide, homicide and legal intervention deaths).
Only the all-deaths category will allow you to click on the injury-related deaths (colored boxes) to see the number of injury deaths by underlying cause of death (e.g., poisoning, fall, drowning) according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes.
Data Filters: Number of Causes
Both the leading causes of death and years of potential life lost charts allow you to rank up to 20 causes of death. The default number of rankings is 10. Sometimes a specific cause (such as homicide) may not fall in the top 10 causes. If you're looking for a specific cause, you may need to increase the rankings to have the cause you want displayed.
Data Filters: Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL)
The option "Calculate YPLL before Age" is only available when you select "years of potential life lost" under "injury outcome" and allows you to select the standard age from which the years of potential life lost (YPLL) is calculated. The default choice is 65. This option also offers older ages in five-year increments up to age 85 (70, 75, 80, 85).
YPLL calculation does not include people who died at the standard age or older. For instance, choosing 65 as the standard age excludes people who died at age 65 or older from the calculation of YPLL-65.
Users can select the year, place, and victim demographics that they wish to include in the final report.
You can request leading causes of death or years of potential life lost charts for data from 2001 and later. If you want a report for a single year, enter the same year in both fields under "Data Years". Be aware that selecting a large number of years at a time may require a long response time.
Also note that you cannot request charts for years 2001 - 2017 when you select either "single race" option under "year and race options."
From the dropdown menu under "geography," users can request to see national, regional and state-level counts for both leading causes of death and years of potential life lost.
Sex
You can request to see leading causes of death or years of potentials life lost for:
- Both sexes (the default), which includes unknown sex, or
- Males only, or
- Females only.
Age
The age formatting option allows you to select the range of the age groups in the leading causes of death chart. Separate formats allow you to create smaller age ranges for young adults and for the elderly:
- 1 - 14 in 5-year groups; 15 - 65+ in 10-year groups
- 1 - 24 in 5-year groups; 25 - 65+ in 10-year groups
- 1 - 14 in 5-year groups; 15 - 85+ in 10-year groups
- 1 - 24 in 5-year groups; 15 - 85+ in 10-year groups
You can also select a custom age range (in years). This option is particularly useful for requesting information on a specific group whose ages do not coincide with the fixed 5 or 10-year age increments, such as teenagers (i.e., ages 13 to 19). To request data covering a single year of age, simply repeat the age in both selection boxes (e.g., 18 to 18).
Race and Ethnicity
You can request leading causes of death and years of potential life lost reports by race and ethnicity. The "Race" variable options change depending on what you select for the "Year and Race Options".
The following options are available when you select "2001 - 2020 by Bridged Race."
- All Races (the default), or
- White, or
- Black, or
- American Indian/Alaska Native, or
- Asian / HI Native / Pacific Islander.
The following options are available when you select "Single Race."
- All Races (the default), or
- White, or
- Black, or
- American Indian / Alaska Native, or
- Asian, or
- HI Native / Pacific Islander, or
- More than One Race.
The following options are available when you select "Single Race (Asian / HI Native / Pacific Islander combined)"
- All Races (the default), or
- White, or
- Black, or
- Asian / HI Native / Pacific Islander, or
- American Indian/Alaska Native, or
- More than One Race.
The Ethnicity variable options (i.e., Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Unknown) are available for all "year and race options" categories, including the "No Race" category.
Leading Causes of Death Chart
The default leading causes of death chart shows the number of deaths for the top major causes of death from greatest to least.
The colored boxes in the leading causes of death chart highlight injury deaths. Click on these colored boxes to see the number of injury deaths by underlying-cause-of-death according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes.
From the menu at the bottom of the chart you can choose to display the data as a table, highlight injury-related or other causes of death, and request to see other statistics (i.e., percentage, crude rate).
Injury deaths among infants and persons of unknown age
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), classifies causes of death which can be ranked differently for infants aged <1 year. Therefore, injury deaths among infants aged <1 year are excluded from leading cause of death calculations when "All Ages" is selected. Deaths among persons of unknown age are also excluded from leading cause of injury death calculations.
Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL) Chart
The default Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL) chart shows the YPLL before age 65 due to leading causes of death. You can choose to display the chart as a table from the dropdown menu under "Display As". You can also choose to see the crude or age adjusted YPLL rate from the dropdown menu under "Shown As."
WISQARS Glossary
Find definitions for crude YPLL rate and age adjusted YPLL rate at the WISQARS Glossary.