Evaluation of Oklahoma’s Electronic Death Registration System and Event Fatality Markers for Disaster-Related Mortality Surveillance – Oklahoma USA M

To accurately count the number of deaths attributable to natural disasters, the authors piloted a procedure to track 48 tornado-related deaths in Oklahoma in May 2013 using three event fatality markers. The authors found that a tornado-specific flag in the death record was the most sensitive event fatality marker, a tornado term in the death certificate was second most sensitive and using a certain ICD-10 code (namely X37, “Victim of a Cataclysmic Storm”) in the death record was the third most sensitive measure. The authors suggest that a written protocol to coordinate the three methods may improve disaster mortality surveillance in the future.