Funder: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative
Grant: Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC)
Participating Institutions: (The Population Health Metrics Research Consortium) 
•	Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, 2301 Fifth Ave, Suite 600, Seattle, WA 98121, USA
•	University of Queensland, School of Population Health, Brisbane, Australia
•	Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
•	Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA
•	Public Health Laboratory-Ivo de Carneri, Pemba, Tanzania
•	Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, India
•	Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University, Lucknow, India
•	National Institute of Public Health, Cuernavaca, Mexico
•	Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, Manila, Philippines
•	The George Institute for Global Health, India, Hyderabad, India
•	Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Summary:
This data set was collected as part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) project. It contains verbal autopsies (VAs) that were collected in six sites in four countries in 2009 using a standardized VA questionnaire developed by the PHMRC. The individual VAs are matched with “gold standard” diagnoses of underlying cause of death, which were established from medical records using stringent diagnostic criteria including laboratory, pathology and medical imaging findings. All “open narrative” portions of the VAs were parsed for individual words or stems, which were tokenized as individual variables in the final data set, to remove any potentially identifying information in that portion of the interview. Variables that were analyzed as “health care experience” in past research are identified in the codebook. More information about the design, implementation and development of this data set can be found here: http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/9/1/27. 

Data Collection
The data was collected using the PHMRC verbal autopsy questionnaire.  A copy of the questionnaire can be found here: http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/9/1/27/additional
Sampling/Population
Data was collected in six sites: Andhra Pradesh, India; Bohol, Philippines; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Mexico City, Mexico; Pemba Island, Tanzania; and Uttar Pradesh, India.  All deaths were identified through medical records using a stringent set of criteria to quality as a ‘gold standard’ for a particular cause.  Details of the sites and the strategy for data collection can be found in the article, Murray CJ, Lopez AD, Black R, et al. Population Health Metrics Research Consortium gold standard verbal autopsy validation study: design, implementation, and development of analysis datasets. Popul Health Metr 2011; 9: 27.
http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/9/1/27