Objective:

to describe improvement of the quality of data on the underlying cause of death from external causes, after performing Health, Public Security and Press sector database linkage in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2014.

Methods:

deterministic data linkage on deaths from external causes of undetermined intent and deaths from undetermined natural causes held on the Mortality Information System (SIM), Forensic Institute, Civil Police, Urgent Mobile Care Service (SAMU) and press databases.

Results:

of the 13,916 deaths from external causes, deaths from causes of undetermined intent were reduced from 5,836 (41.9%) to 958 (6.9%); while 222 (10.7%) of the 2,069 deaths from undetermined natural causes were reclassified to external causes; there was an increase in mortality due to traffic accidents (93.0%), assault (71.6%), legal intervention (744.7%), intentional self-harm (112%) and other accidents (29.9%).

Conclusion:

there was an improvement in the quality of the information by type of underlying cause of death from external causes, using a strategy that can be reproduced by other services.

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