Unintentional poisoning deaths have risen in recent years, and are largely attributable to drug overdoses. While the rate of unintentional poisoning deaths are much higher for males, there has been a greater increase in unintentional poisoning deaths among females.
Measure Description:
- AAR (per 10k) is the total number of deaths for each cause per 10,000 population. Age adjustment to the 2000 Standard US Census is done to allow direct comparison of rates in counties and state with different population age distributions.
- Categories of diseases are based on ICD-10 mortality coding. Unintentional poisoning deaths include all types of poisonings, including drug overdoses and other exposures. More information about the specific codes contained in this measure can be found here.
- Poisoning deaths are rare events. Some counties will not have data that can be displayed because confidentiality and privacy standards in Iowa prevent the display of data when there are 5 or fewer unintentional poisoning deaths in a year at either the state or county level.