Objective

To propose and evaluate a model for fitting and forecasting the mortality rates in Colombia that allows analyzing the trends by age, sex, region and cause of death.

Methodology

The national death registries were used as primary source of analysis. The data was pre-processed recodifying the cause of death and redistributing the garbage codes. The forecast model was formulated as a linear approximation with a set of variables of interest, in particular the population and gross domestic product (GDP) by region.

Results

As study case we took the mortality under 5 years old, it decreased steadily since 2000 at the national level and at most of the regions. The predictive power of the proposed methodology was tested by fitting the model with the data from 2000 to 2011, the forecast for 2012 was compared with the actual rate, and these results show the model is reliable enough for most of the region-cause combinations.

Conclusions

The proposed methodology and model have the potential to become an instrument to guide health spending priorities using some kind of evidence.