Modeling causes of death: an integrated approach using CODEm

Key Points

• To describe and evaluate CODEm, an integrated analytical framework designed to improve the accuracy and robustness of cause of death estimations.
• Applied the Cause of Death Ensemble model (CODEm) framework to estimate trends across multiple major causes of death.
• Evaluated model performance against existing mortality modeling approaches with respect to specification bias and trend consistency.
• CODEm yields improved estimates of cause of death trends compared to previous statistical approaches.
• The ensemble modeling approach shows reduced susceptibility to bias introduced during model specification.