The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) is a massive database that compiles detailed mortality data from every county and state in America. The granularity of the CDC WONDER data set makes it a powerful tool to understand community health. You can explore data at the national, state and county level, broken down by sex, age, race, and ethnicity.

1. Briana Preslar
Sales + Marketing Coordinator
(800) 819-9785
briana@livestories.com
WONDERing About Your Community’s
Health?
Utilizing the Power of CDC Data

2. Who am I?
- Attained two Bachelor's degrees from the University of Washington for
Medical Anthropology / Global Health + Evolutionary Biology
- As the sales and marketing coordinator I interact with clients who build resources around
CDC WONDER data regularly.
- Content creator for LiveStatistics resource page: https://www.livestories.com/statistics
(This contains data about your community at a national, state, county, and city level)
Briana Preslar
Sales + Marketing Coordinator
(800) 819-9785
briana@livestories.com

3. Today We Will:
- Cover CDC WONDER data basics
- Download, format, and visualize mortality data
- Explore examples of CDC WONDER Data
Stories
THE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTHE TOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS

4. “State, local, and county health departments rely on data shared on
CDC WONDER to review their community’s population health
trends, evaluate their program’s performance... and compare their
community with other locations.”
- Center for Disease Control

5. What are you doing that requires you to
work with CDC WONDER data?

6. THE BASICS
What is CDC WONDER?
- Really it’s two acronyms
CDC: Center for Disease Control
WONDER: Wide-ranging Online Data for
Epidemiologic Research
- It is an online data management system
The CDC partners with numerous agencies
to collect and manage public-use data and
make them queryable.
You can see a list of what the database includes here
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTHE TOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS

7. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
CDC WONDER is a self-help resource:

8. THE BASICS
What is in the data?
● The datasets deal with most reportable
health related topics (cancer, heart disease,
etc).
● The most reliable data is represented in
mortality and natality counts.
● You can find a list all of topics here, as well
as a designation of who hosts the data. IF
you need summaries of the data you can
find that here.
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
NOTE: Not all of the topics here are hosted by WONDER, but they are normalized by
the CDC to be useable.
THE BASICS

9. WONDER Words You Should Know
Topics vs. Tables — WONDER is made up of many topics, but a table is more narrow then a topic
because it investigates a specific subset or slice of the data.
Natality / Mortality ––––––––––––––––> Birth count / Death count
Underlying Cause of Death (UCD) –––> This is the ultimate cause of death determined by a
physician. There is only one of these assigned to a death
Multiple Causes of Death (MCD) ––––> These are potential contributing factors to the death. There
can be up to 20 of these associated with a single death
International Classification of Diseases,
Tenth Revision Codes (ICD 10) ––––> International Classifications of Disease - 10th Edition
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTHE TOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS

10. Is your organization using software to
make sense of data sets like
CDC WONDER?

11. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
The truth is CDC WONDER assumes you are using software
to work with the data set …(examples)
THE BASICS

12. What topics does CDC WONDER include?
- Death Data
- Birth Data
- Immunization Data
- Exposure Data
- And the list goes on…
- Find the entire list here
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUCDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
THE TOPICS
THE TOPICS

13. Things to Remember:
- The topics in this data set do not correlate with
tables in the data set.
- You create the data table by choosing the
variables you are interested in seeing.
- Like other large data sets, CDC WONDER data
is labeled with codes and they are set up in as a
hierarchy. Grab them NOW, so you can refer
back to them LATER.
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUCDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE TOPICS

14. CREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
WARNING:
All the FAQ’s are about utilizing
the data…this should be a clue the
data is not user friendly.
We recommend you also use the
help pages they have created.

15. Step 1: Organize table layout / choose variables
Step 2: Select location
Step 3: Select demographics
Step 4: Select time parameters
Step 5: Select weekday, autopsy, and place of death
Step 6: Select cause of death
Step 7: Select options then export
Step 8: Visualize
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
To visualize CDC WONDER data:

17. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS

18. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS

19. To visualize in a software:
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
Drag and drop the downloaded file into your excel application icon.
It will open in excel.
- Hit “Save as”
- Convert the .txt format to be workable in your software
(example: .xls , .csv , etc.)
Most softwares should be able to operate using one of those file
formats listed above.

21. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
DATA STORIES
- Opioid data can be found in the
CDC WONDER System
- Many of our customers are
interested in this particular part
of the data because of the rise in
opioid related deaths
- When working with this data be
sure to use UCD data and NOT
MCD data

22. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS CDC WONDER DATA STORIES

23. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS CDC WONDER DATA STORIES

24. - You are able to find our “About the
Data” sections on most of our
content
- We encourage citations always be
used when communicating data
from a large data set
- Sharing this information
encourages others to replicate your
work and makes this process easier
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS CDC WONDER DATA STORIES

25. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS CDC WONDER DATA STORIES

26. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS
We took publicly available data and created
web pages for every state and most counties
across the United States—and created
LiveStories Statistics (LiveStats)
Ocean County, New Jersey
● Uses the LiveStats page
to quickly grab pre-made
charts using publicly
available information from
the CDC WONDER.

27. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS

28. DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS

29. What other publicly available datasets
are you working with?

30. Submit your thoughts!
- Look out for link to our next webinar
- For more info email us at Info@livestories.com
- Submit your questions to us now using the chat
window!
Briana Preslar
Sales + Marketing Coordinator
(800)819-9785
briana@livestories.com
See Data About Your Community:
LiveStories.com/Statistics

31. LiveStories Statistics Page - https://www.livestories.com/statistics
How to build a chart - https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/ucd.html#
FAQ - https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/faq.html
Included Topics - https://wonder.cdc.gov/WelcomeT.html
CDC WONDER Resources
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS CDC WONDER DATA STORIES

32. LiveStories Statistics Page - https://www.livestories.com/statistics
How to build a chart - https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/ucd.html#
FAQ - https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/faq.html
Included Topics - https://wonder.cdc.gov/WelcomeT.html
CDC WONDER Resources
DEFINITIONS SEE IT AROUND YOULOCALITIES CDC IN ACTIONCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALSTHE BASICS SEE IT AROUND YOUTOPICS CDC WONDER DATA STORIESCREATING EFFECTIVE VISUALS CDC WONDER DATA STORIES