InterVA4: An R package to analyze verbal autopsy data

Verbal autopsy (VA) is a widely used survey-based tool for inferring the cause of death (COD) in regions where deaths are not recorded routinely. InterVA4 is a popular algorithm for assigning CODs from VA data, but is currently only available to practitioners through a proprietary software program. The InterVA4 package provides an open-source, R implementation of the InterVA4 algorithm. The package aims to enable more flexible statistical analyses of verbal autopsy results with simple functions and built-in graphical visualization. This paper discusses the relevant algorithm, the implementations in R and a discussion of the InterVA-4 model.