IHME research applied a novel methodology to death registration data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) in order to estimate annual county-level mortality rates for 21 mutually exclusive causes of death. This dataset provides estimates for cause-specific age-standardized mortality rates at the county level for each state, the District of Columbia, and the United States as a whole for 1980-2014 (quinquennial), as well as the changes in rates during this period. Also included are data on the 10 counties with the highest and lowest mortality rates for each cause in 2014. Study results were published in JAMA in December 2016 in "US county-level trends in mortality rates for major causes of death, 1980–2014."