The purpose of this report is to provide information concerning
injury mortality among infants, children (ages 1-14) and
adolescents (ages 15-19) in Arizona. The data for 1997 are
placed in a temporal context by comparison with the data for the
preceding ten years. Data on the number and characteristics of
injury deaths among Arizona residents 19 years old or younger
were obtained from the death certificates filed with the Arizona
Department of Health Services. In this report, fatal injuries as
the underlying cause of death are defined and coded according to
ICD-9* in the following manner: Population denominators for
Arizona residents, used to calculate rates, are projections from
the Population Statistics Unit in the Arizona Department of
Economic Security (data for 1987-1989 and 1993-1997) and the
U.S. Census Bureau (data for 1990 and data by ethnic group for
1997). Detailed population data by gender, age and county were
unavailable for 1991-1992. In order to obtain the population
denominators for these two