ABSTRACT
"Reliable mortality data are essential for planning health interventions; yet such data are often not available or reliable in developing countries; especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Health and socio-demographic surveillance sites; such as Agincourt in South Africa; are often the only way to assess and prospectively understand health trends at a population level; and thus have the potential to address this gap. This article summarises the main findings from my PhD in which advanced methods were applied to better understand the dynamics of age-specific mortality both in space and time; to identify age-specific mortality risk factors which have a high ""impact"" at a population level; and to relate inequalities in risk factor distributions to observed spatial mortality risk patterns."