Linkage of the nationally representative Canadian Community Health Survey - Nutrition 2004 to routinely collected mortality records.

Introduction: The Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) - Nutrition 2004 (n=35,107; interview dates from January 2004 to January 2005) linked to the Canadian Vital Statistics - Death Database (CVSD) (2011) represents a novel linkage of a population-based, nationally representative nutrition survey with routinely collected mortality records (including date and cause of death). The linkage was done through individual tax data in Canada, and contains longitudinal records for 29,897 Canadians aged 0 years and older-1,753 of whom died-in the 10 provinces of Canada. The median follow-up time was 7.49 years, with 102,953 person-years among males and 114,876 person-years among females (unweighted), and included a special sampling survey weight (for linked data) to account for those who did not agree to share and link their information. The CCHS - Nutrition 2004 linked to CVSD has been used to evaluate associations between lifestyle and sociodemographic characteristics and mortality. Using these data, statistical methods have been developed and tested to control random and systematic measurement errors when evaluating the relationship between different dietary exposures (evaluated using repeated 24-hour dietary recalls) and health outcomes. The linked data are available through Statistics Canada's Research Data Centres.