Calculating Age-Standardized Death Rates Among People With HIV Comparable Across Jurisdictions and Over Time.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local health jurisdictions have been using HIV surveillance data to monitor mortality among people with HIV in the United States with age-standardized death rates, but the principles of age standardization have not been consistently followed, making age standardization lose its purpose-comparison over time, across jurisdictions, or by other characteristics.We review the current practices of age standardization in calculating death rates among people with HIV in the United States, discuss the principles of age standardization including those specific to the HIV population whose age distribution differs markedly from that of the US 2000 standard population, make recommendations, and report age-standardized death rates among people with HIV in New York City.When we restricted the analysis population to adults aged between 18 and 84 years in New York City, the age-standardized death rate among people with HIV decreased from 20.8 per 1000 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 19.2, 22.3) in 2013 to 17.1 per 1000 (95% CI = 15.8, 18.3) in 2017, and the age-standardized death rate among people without HIV decreased from 5.8 per 1000 in 2013 to 5.5 per 1000 in 2017.