National Center for Environmental Health / National Center for Health Statistics
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Filling Out Part I
As with any death, the cause-of-death sequence should be reported as precisely as possible in Part I of the death certificate, with the most recent condition listed on line a and the initiating condition on the lowest used line. Certifiers should report a single condition on each line, even if they may have occurred simultaneously. Avoid using abbreviations or acronyms. The disaster type and name can be included in Part I as a cause of death. Remember, conditions do not have to be diseases. You can include non-clinical information, like the circumstance of death in Part 1 as a cause of death. The following images record the disaster type, name, and circumstance of death in Part I.
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