WARNING! DATA USE RESTRICTIONS
  
        Read Carefully Before Using
  
                                                                 
 The Public Health Service Act (Section 308) (d) provides that the data 
 collected by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for 
 Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), may be used only for the purpose of 
 health statistical reporting and analysis.
  
 Any effort to determine the identity of any reported case is prohibited 
 by this law.
  
 NCHS does all it can to assure that the identity of data subjects cannot 
 be disclosed.  All direct identifiers, as well as any characteristics that 
 might lead to identification, are omitted from these datasets.  Any 
 intentional identification or disclosure of a person or establishment 

 violates the assurances of confidentiality given to the providers of the 
 information.  Therefore, users will:
  
  1.  Use the data in these datasets for statistical reporting and analysis 
      only.
  
  2.  Make no use of the identity of any person or establishment discovered 
      inadvertently and advise the Director, NCHS, of any such discovery.
  
  3.  Not link these datasets with individually identifiable data from other 
      NCHS or non-NCHS datasets.

  
This CD-ROM contains the Multiple Cause of Death public use files for 2004.  The files are in 
ASCII  format and the United States file has been compressed using WinZip 9.  The filename of 
the United States file is Mort04us.zip; it comprises 2,401,400 records.  The Territories file is 
called Mort04ps.dat and comprises 30,848 records.   Record length for both files is 488 positions.

Documentation files and tables are included in the folder Doc. They are variously in Microsoft 
Word  and PDF formats.  They comprise the following files:

Record Layout
 
Geographic code outlines:
  Usgeoint04 - Introduction to the Vital Statistics Geographic Code Outline for the United 
  GeoOutline04- Vital Statistics Geographic Code Outline for the United States
  Terrgeoint04 - Introduction to the Vital Statistics Geographic Code Outline for the Territories
  Terrgeolst04 - Vital Statistics Geographic Code Outline for the Territories    
  Uspmsa04 - List of Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas and their Component Counties          
    for the United States
   Terrpmsa04  - List of Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas and their Component Counties for 
    Puerto Rico  

Cause-of-death lists:
  358cause - List of 358 selected causes of death
  113cause - List of 113 selected causes of death
  130cause - List of 130 selected causes of infant death
  39cause - List of 39 selected causes of death

Six Control total tables (refer to titles for contents)
 Technical Appendix from Vital Statistics of the United States, Mortality, 1999                                 
                              
Published documentation will also include an Introduction to the public use file and the 
Technical Appendix from Vital Statistics of the United States, Mortality, 2004.   These 
documents are not yet available.