We have recently published two condensed versions of our verbal autopsy (VA) interpretation guidance document, which are now available on the Gateway.

We are pleased to announce the release of SmartVA-Analyze 2.1, developed in partnership with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative at the University of Melbourne is now accepting applications for its Fellowship program.

Publication of VA data in Myanmar's annual statistical yearbook demonstrates progress and commitment to CRVS systems development.

We are excited to announce the commencement of our remote Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Fellowship.

Sofoora Kawsar Usman drives change in her country's CRVS system.

Trialling a complementary paper-based verbal autopsy data collection system.

Helping physicians in Philippines emergency departments to certify cause of death using SmartVA

We are pleased to share our new report, “Advocating for change: How advocacy contributed to strengthened civil registration and vital statistics in Myanmar”.

Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) Resource Kits summarise and introduce the most important papers, tools and guidance documents for countries to begin planning for and implementing CRVS interventions.

We are pleased to announce the publication of “Are cause of death data fit for purpose? evidence from 20 countries at different levels of socio-economic development” in PLoS One.

Delivering support and capacity-building to country personnel during the pandemic.

Resource page for technical guides, tools and other resources relating to COVID-19.

In this blog, Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Fellow Dilip Hensman reflects on how COVID-19 surveillance challenges could be turned into opportunities.

The ANACONDA (Analysis of Causes of National Deaths for Action) tool is now available for download.   

Introducing ANACONDA (Analysis of Causes of National Deaths for Action). ANACONDA is a tool designed to help users of routine mortality data understand how fit–for-purpose their data are.

The rollout of Verbal Autopsy Interpretation, Performance and Evaluation Resource (VIPER) to improve CRVS data analysis in Myanmar

The first CRVS collection to report on experience in implementing technical interventions over the first four years of the Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative.

Follow Martha Wame, Field Coordinator for the Bloomberg Data for Health initiative in Papua New Guinea, as she travels by car, boat and foot to conduct Verbal Autopsies in rural communities.

Last October a new intake of CRVS Fellows arrived in Melbourne. We reached out to three Fellows from October’s intake to track their progress.

Introducing the Verbal Autopsy Interpretation, Performance and Evaluation Resource (VIPER). VIPER helps you analyse and understand the cause of death (COD) data generated by verbal autopsy (VA). 

Brazilian Journal of Epidemiology publishes Raquel's fellowship project Investigation of garbage code deaths to improve the quality of cause-of-death in Brazil: results from a pilot study.

Dr Saman Gamage, one of the Technical Advisers for the Data for Health (D4H) initiative at the University of Melbourne rolls out training to Myanmar, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Representatives from the member churches of the Solomon Islands Christian Association (SICA) met with officials from the Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for a workshop on improving death registration led by University of Melbourne Data for Health.

Applications are currently open for the next CRVS Fellowship Program intake.

These guidelines provide five steps for users of verbal autopsy (VA) to follow to help them interpret and present their data, and thus improve the utility of VA data for public health decision making.

Countries can benefit from new tools that assist in determining the costs of implementing CRVS systems, and provide guidance and calculation on how large verbal autopsy sampling sizes should be in order to ensure the results are representative of the country.

We wrap up our collective achievements over the past four years of the initiative, share accounts of verbal autopsy work in the field, in-depth interviews with our colleagues in Brazil, Colombia and Myanmar and talk to our Fellows about what they are excited to learn.

Have you been trained on ANACONDA? Our new template assists countries to write reports about the quality of mortality and cause of death data in their countries or a sub-region using ANACONDA to calculate indicators and produce charts and tables.

Watch videos with CRVS experts on Solomon Islands interventions to improve their cause of death information.

Although largely manual, the Sri Lankan registration system manages to register most births and deaths. However it is slow in compiling data from all the registration points, coding cause of death data, and releasing vital statistics. Sri Lankan CRVS experts weigh in on how the country is improving their system as part of the Data for Health Initiative.

Новые российские ресурсы от Data for Health

Watch videos with Brazil's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Assista a vídeos com as partes interessadas do RCEB do Brasil sobre como o país está trabalhando para fortalecer seu sistema de RCEV e melhorar seus dados de causa de morte.

Myanmar has made great progress in strengthening civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). In order to maximise the impact of CRVS on improved population health and the prevention of premature death and disability, the government requires accurate, reliable, timely, and complete information on birth and death registration, including data on cause of death (COD).

Before Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative launched in Bangladesh, there was very little information on who was dying of what, which is needed to guide public health policies and plans. Watch videos with Bangladesh's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Zambia's rate of death registration coverage has been low as a result of the law that requires all deaths that are registered to have a cause. The Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative in Zambia is using verbal autopsy methods to count deaths that occur outside of health settings, in order to get a better understanding of who is dying of what in the country, which will better inform preventative health policies and plans.

As part of the CRVS BD4H Initiative, Shanghai will implement five interventions to advance system performance by focusing on improvements in the quality of mortality statistics generated through their surveillance system.

Watch videos with Ghana's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Tanzania has demonstrated an increased commitment to civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system improvement, as reflected in its five-year country CRVS strategy (2015 to 2020). However, key stakeholders and governance mechanisms for CRVS are poorly linked, resulting in incomplete and inadequate data sources for informing policy-making. Watch videos with Tanzania's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

With the view of creating sustainability of CRVS interventions in countries supported by the Data for Health Initiative, the University of Melbourne has committed to a fellowship program that has grown throughout the four-year project.

Mire videos con las partes interesadas de RCEV de Colombia sobre cómo está trabajando el país para fortalecer su sistema de RCEV y mejorar sus datos de causa de muerte.

Watch videos with Colombia's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Dr Ian Riley describes how the method has evolved from his work in the 1970s examining the efficacy of the pneumococcal vaccine in Papua New Guinea into large-scale implementation to improve civil registration and vital statistics.

Watch videos with Rwanda's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Watch videos with Ecuador's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Mire videos con las partes interesadas de CRVS de Ecuador sobre cómo está trabajando el país para fortalecer su sistema de RCEV y mejorar sus datos de causa de muerte.

Mire videos con las partes interesadas de RCEV de Perú sobre cómo está trabajando el país para fortalecer su sistema de RCEV y mejorar sus datos de causa de muerte.

Watch videos with Peru's CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Watch videos with Filipino CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

Watch videos with Papua New Guinea CRVS stakeholders on how the country is working to strengthen their CRVS system and improve their cause of death data.

An improved version of SmartVA Analyze (including full source code) has been released.

Three new reports have just been published on work undertaken as part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative.

Ila Rouka and Elizabeth Mathias from the National Department of Health, Papua New Guinea (PNG), came to the University of Melbourne for a fellowship to analyse medical certificates of cause of death.

Read the latest fellowship report: Patterns and trends in Rwandan hospital mortality data, 2017-2018, by Patrick Nshimiyimana from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda.

New or existing users of SmartVA and ODK can benefit from short, step-by-step guides.

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the improvement of the quality of the information on causes of death in Brazil, with the participation of the three spheres of government, civil society, universities, and international institutions. This report summarises the main outcomes of the meeting, including each of the main sessions, comments from participants, and links to additional resources.

Le présent manuel a été conçu de façon à servir de ressource que les médecins peuvent garder à portée de main et consulter rapidement et facilement.

Congratulations to University of Melbourne Data for Health Fellow Dr Chamika Senanayake for winning a Commonwealth Digital Health Award in Colombo, Sri Lanka in the category of health promotion and health education for his work on SmartVA DHIS2 integration.

Between November 2016 and February 2017 Ms Tun Zin Mar, from the Central Statistical Office came to the University of Melbourne to develop a framework of analysis for a qualitative study to learn about the experiences of verbal autopsy interviewers during the initial phases of implementation.

Notification of deaths, particularly deaths in the community, requires special attention and will likely need specific interventions tailored to each country. Two checklists have been developed for countries seeking to audit and improve internal notification of community deaths.

CRVS Knowledge Gateway users can find answers to their frequently asked questions more easily with a new FAQ page.

This report provides practical guidance about how population and health observatories and CRVS systems can collaborate, to ultimately improve the registration and certification of births, deaths, and causes of death.

This paper details Colombia’s strategy to increase the registration and certification of vital events in rural municipalities and ethnic communities. Key parts of this intervention involve developing a proactive search system to improve capture of vital events through mobile notification, and subsequently applying automated verbal autopsy to determine probable cause of community-based deaths.

Describes the development, testing, and potential impact of a mobile application for doctors to improve the recording of cause of death in Sri Lanka.

Well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems will play an important role in assisting countries and regions to measure, monitor and meet their Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets.

This fellowship report highlights key features of the CRVS-VA management dashboard that was developed by Patrick Larbi-Debrah from the Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation department of Ghana Health Service, as part of his time at the Universities of Melbourne and Basel.

This new resource summarises key points from the Lancet series paper, which discussed results from a global assessment of CRVS systems, and the development of a composite index, the Vital Statistics Performance Index (VSPI) that can monitor data quality and progress over time.

Recently in Bangkok, representatives from 12 ESCAP countries gathered for the first capacity-building workshop using ANACONDA and the new ANACONDA Plus program.

Report on the expert group meeting, 27–28 February 2017

You can keep up-to-date on the Data for Health Initiative by signing up to receive our quarterly e-newsletter.

Recently, the birth registration rate jumped to more than 40 percent after Bangladesh re-worked their CRVS system.

Professor Alan Lopez says the use of big data can revolutionise global health policy.

With the increasing capabilities of technology to bring together scientists who were once separated geographically or by different disciplines, we now have the ability to track and estimate disease, injuries and risk factors down to the specifics, and with a level of accuracy that we couldn’t have imagined before.

Historically in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the two major health systems for capturing deaths and causes of death have not provided complete or timely information.

Greenland is considered a high-income country that has almost doubled its life expectancy since the 1950s, yet the life expectancy of the country is that of low-income countries - so what are people dying of and why?

In Peru, over one in five people who die are not being counted in either the Ministry of Health or in the National Registry of Identification and Marital Status.

A new interactive mobile app that was created as part of Data for Health, won an award at the Commonwealth Digital Health Conference Awards in Colombo, Sri Lanka in October 2017.

A new empirical method to estimate the completeness of death registration, has been developed and launched by the CRVS team at the University of Melbourne.

The CRVS Knowledge Gateway developed by the University of Melbourne, provides technical tools and information that countries can use to improve birth and death data, with the ultimate goal to support their citizens to live longer, healthier lives.

“The implications of not having your birth registered are huge,” says statistician and BD4H Tanzania CRVS Fellow Chris Sanga, “yet as little as 1 in 4 Tanzanian children under the age of 5 have had their birth registered.”

The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute at the University of Basel is the University of Melbourne’s collaborator for the BD4H Initiative, developing CRVS tools and filling knowledge and methods gaps in order to provide technical assistance to countries.

In order to build capacity to strengthen CRVS systems in countries involved in the BD4H, six to eight fellows from the project's countries are trained a year on CRVS systems and work on a project with direct application to BD4H activities in their country.

Access to reliable and timely mortality and cause of death statistics is essential for monitoring trends in diseases, injuries and risk factors, and critically important to guide good public health policy and prevention. Training in ANACONDA will build this capacity in the Philippines, enabling them to identify inconsistencies and errors in their mortality datasets and subsequently improve the quality of their mortality statistics.

Country coordinators from Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Malawi, Myanmar, Peru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tanzania and Zambia attended a CRVS boot camp organised by Bloomberg Data for Health partners, the University of Melbourne and Vital Strategies.

“Estimating and analysing the distribution of causes of death in rural areas of the world may not sound as sexy as ground-breaking surgery techniques, but it has the potential to save millions of lives. Our research will help inform health policy in underdeveloped regions of the world,” Riley said.

Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative researchers Professor Alan Lopez, Dr Tim Adair, Sonja Firth and Nicola Richards travelled to Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, in early August to assist with strengthening the local civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system.

Both Bangladesh and Myanmar have prioritised coding in their Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Country Work Plans. The country does not have a team of coders so the training has helped build the expertise in-country.

In May, the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health (BD4H) Initiative joined with several countries in Bangkok to develop country-specific process models for the registration of births and deaths, both inside and outside health facilities.