This survey will provide information on the characteristics of decedents and on the circumstances associated with their deaths that would supplement existing information on the death certificate. Specific areas to be studied include socioeconomic differentials in mortality, risk factors associated with what NCHS refers to as """"""""premature"""""""" death, health care in the last year of life, and reliability of certain items reported on the death certificate. Through this interagency agreement NIA would be providing support to enrich the NCHS survey in those areas of importance to NIA research goals. Specifically, we are interested in obtaining national data concerning those characteristics of elderly decedents related to cognition, and the use of health care in the last year of life. A nationally representative sample of death could provide much needed data on the proportion of decedents showing signs of cognitive impairment, or decedents who were reported by their proxies to have been diagnosed by a physician to have had Alzheimer's disease or other dementing illness. This would provide better information than has been previously available on the relationship between dementing illness, cause of death and associated risk factors. In addition, these data will complement and enhance community-level data on similar topics being collected for NIA in the Survey of the Last Days of Life.
