ABOUT MORTALITY RESEARCH & CONSULTING, INC.

Epidemiological research often concerns mortality, even if only indirectly. Research capital (human and otherwise) available for projects intent on understanding, preventing, and treating human disease is often directed preferentially to research on diseases that hasten mortality. Understanding patterns and determinants of human mortality is an essential part of medical research.

Furthermore, mortality must be accounted for in many longitudinal analyses that are not directly focused on it as an outcome. All longitudinal studies of human growth, development, or change may be influenced by the potential for and timing of death. For example, a study of factors affecting transition from job to job throughout life would be influenced by the mortality of workers during the period of follow-up. While in this sense death may be treated as a kind of censoring event (in the technical jargon of survival analysis), in other cases it may be an endpoint of interest in its own right. Finally, for a proper analysis of the likelihood of any particular outcome occurring (e.g., a change in jobs, a loss of independence, remission or onset of a disease), a thorough understanding of the methods for survival analysis is crucial.