Age-Standardized Mortality Rates in the Caribbean: One Source, Three Different Interpretations

Age-Standardized Mortality Rates in the Caribbean: One Source, Three Different Interpretations

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Purpose: A recent publication in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) provided the opportunity to calculate differences in published cancer mortality estimates for Caribbean jurisdictions from three organizations: MMWR, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.This comparison study serves to educate end users of these data.Methods: We downloaded the publicly available cancer mortality estimates for 15 jurisdictions and the United States from the three organizations.

We compared reported age-standardized mortality rates for Pie Dish each jurisdiction and calculated the range among estimates for each jurisdiction.We repeated this analysis after applying the same world population standard to all estimates.Results: For males, the ranges of the Caribbean estimates were between 49% (Grenada and Trinidad) and 201% (US Virgin Islands) of the MMWR value, with an average of 88%.

For females, the ranges were between 15% (Trinidad) and 171% (US Virgin Islands) of the MMWR value, with an average of 64%.After all estimates were compared using the same population standard, the ranges of the Caribbean estimates for males were between 6% (Grenada) and 111% (US Virgin Islands) of the MMWR value, with an average of 34%.For females, the ranges were between 7% (Grenada) and 97% (US Virgin Islands), with an average of 28%.

Conclusion: The use of different standard populations complicates comparisons across organizations.Data modeling does not completely compensate for quality of source data, as our analysis demonstrated by the differences in Equine - Tack - Bits - Accessories mortality rates despite the good quality of the vital registration in the Caribbean.