Subsequent to the passage of the original Vital Statistics Act by the General Assembly in 1912, vital statistics data for Virginia have been compiled each year since 1913. They were published as the Virginia Vital Statistics Annual Reports through 1994. In 1995, the report consolidated data from other publications and expanded its coverage to other topics in vital statistics. Since then, it has been published in multiple volumes under the name of Virginia Health Statistics, although its coverage has continued to be primarily vital statistics data.
Birth and death data have been compiled for each of the years since 1913. Marriage data were first collected for 1917, and divorce data have been recorded since 1918. Currently, the certificates in each of these areas are filed with the Division of Vital Records and the birth and death data are analyzed by the Virginia Division of Health Statistics. The certificates are housed in vaults in the Division of Vital Records, with required security arrangements to ensure their confidentiality and integrity. Certified copies of the certificates are provided only to persons authorized by law to receive them.
All certificates and reports for live births, induced terminations of pregnancy, natural fetal deaths, and deaths are filed by hospitals, physicians, midwives, and funeral directors with the local health department serving the county or independent city in which the event occurred. These are transferred to the Division of Vital Records weekly, with early transmissions of birth data via an electronic birth certificate system. Marriage and divorce abstracts are transmitted to the division monthly by the clerks of the various city and county courts.
Reciprocity arrangements exist among the states for the interstate exchange of live birth, natural fetal death, induced termination, and death data. These provide an out-of-state count of events occurring to Virginia residents. Likewise, copies of certificates of these events occurring in Virginia to non-residents are sent to the proper states. The Virginia files thus seek to include all vital events data that occur in the state plus those to Virginia residents that occurred elsewhere. A distinction is then made in the tables and analyses as to those events occurring in Virginia and to those occurring to residents of Virginia.