The deaths that take longest to count are the ones people most want counted

The National Center for Health Statistics publishes **quarterly provisional
estimates of mortality**, built from all vital statistics data received and
processed as of a stated cutoff date. **These estimates closely match final
data**, and are revised in later releases as more records arrive.

The lag, and where it falls

**Approximately 5% of death records are initially received with the cause of
death pending investigation** — and those are **mostly deaths due to external
causes**: unintentional injuries, suicides, homicides and drug overdoses.

The consequence is systematic rather than random: **provisional estimates for
some external causes are not available for the most recent quarter or
quarters**, while estimates for heart disease or cancer are.

So the causes of death that attract the most urgent public attention — the
overdose curve, the homicide rate, the suicide rate — are precisely the ones
whose numbers arrive last. Anyone reading the most recent quarter and finding
those categories missing is seeing a coroner's caseload, not a data failure.

What a release contains

The current release presents provisional death rates **for the third quarter
of 2025**, by sex, age category and state of residence, based on records
processed as of 19 April 2026. It covers the 15 leading causes of death,
plus:

• Drug overdose
• Falls in people aged 65 and over
• Firearm-related injuries
• HIV disease
• Homicide

Rates for drug overdose, falls in the over-65s, firearm injury, homicide,
suicide and unintentional injury run only **through the second quarter of
2025** — one quarter behind the rest, for the reason above.

How to read the comparisons

Three deliberate choices shape what is published:

• Each quarter is compared with the same quarter a year earlier, not with
  the previous quarter, to minimise seasonal influence.
• A 12-month moving average is given alongside. The 12-month period ending
  with Q2 2025 covers 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, and **the 12-month period
  ending with Q4 of a year can be read as an annual provisional estimate for
  that year.**
• Differences are reported only if statistically significant.

Both crude and age-adjusted rates are given, which matters for any
comparison between states: a state with an older population will have a higher
crude death rate for reasons that have nothing to do with its health system.

*Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.*