Do you know the leading cause of death in your local area?
In July 2019, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) released a suite of products on deaths including Deaths in Australia, General Record of Incidence of Mortality (GRIM) data and Mortality Over Regions and Time (MORT) books.
These products generated a significant amount of media attention. The data was of interest to local media organisations which published stories about common causes of death and change over time specific to their regions.
The GRIM data visualisation presents historical and recent deaths data in an interactive format. GRIM data for some causes of death start at 1907. There are 55 selected causes of death presented in the interactive data. The MORT books are Excel workbooks that contain recent deaths data for specific geographical areas, including leading causes of death by sex for each geographical area. Additionally, Deaths in Australia is a web report providing information on patterns of diseases that cause death, by population groups and over time.
In the month following the publications release, the reports attracted 121 media mentions, including 43 online news, 39 newspapers, 35 radio, 3 TV and 1 magazine. According to our media monitoring, this coverage reached a cumulative audience of 2.6 million people. The report was mentioned in many smaller, rural newspapers and gave the AIHW the opportunity to expand the network of media organisations it works with to publicise reports.