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About the National Violent Death Reporting System
The Public Health Problem
Violence is a major public health problem
in the United States. Homicide and suicide account for more than 46,000
deaths each year.¹
Homicide was the second leading cause of
death for people ages 10 to 24 in 2001.¹ Suicide was the third leading cause
of death for people ages 10 to 24 in 2001.¹ More information is available
from CDC Injury Center's
WISQARS reports
on leading causes of death.
Current data do not provide all the
information needed to accurately assess the factors causing violent deaths.
Death certificates, for example, cannot link victim and suspect information.
¹ Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS)
[Online]. (2002). National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (producer). Available from: URL:
www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars.
The Goal of NVDRS
A state-based violent death reporting system, NVDRS will provide accurate
and timely information to:
- make informed decisions about local
policies and programs geared toward keeping citizens safe;
- help decision makers answer questions
about the magnitude, trends, and characteristics of violent deaths;
- evaluate and continue to improve
state-based violence prevention policies and programs.
The Gaps in Understanding
- Currently, local, state, and national
policy makers and community program developers do not have comprehensive
information about violent deaths.
- State and local agencies have detailed
information that answers fundamental questions about patterns and trends
in violence, yet this information is fragmented and inaccessible. Creating
a system to pool these valuable data would help answer such fundamental
questions as:
- Are violent deaths in schools
increasing or decreasing?
- What proportion of homicides result
from illicit drug deals?
- How often do murder-suicides occur?
- How frequently are homicides
associated with child abuse?
- How serious a threat are mass
killings?
CDC's Current Activities
- As of January 2004, CDC is funding 13
states (AK, CO, GA, MA, MD, NC, NJ, OK, OR, RI, SC, VA, WI) to implement
the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). To standardize the
system, CDC offers trainings on implementation and data coding. CDC
continually evaluates activities to improve the system and to assure data
quality.
- CDC is piloting the collection of data
from state child fatality review teams to better understand the value it
adds to NVDRS.
- CDC has begun estimating the cost of
fully implementing NVDRS to provide accurate cost-benefit information for
decision makers in federal, state, and local entities.
Note: Some of theses links lead outside the
CDC site to another federal agency or CDC partner site. Any links from these
sites to nonfederal organizations' links do not constitute an endorsement of
these organizations or their programs by CDC or the federal government, and
none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of the
individual organization Web pages found at these links.
CDC's Planned Activities
- CDC will continue its work to strengthen
the public health infrastructure. CDC will collect and link data about
incidents of violent death in the United States.
- CDC will eventually incorporate NVDRS
into the Public Health Information Network (PHIN) to integrate it with
other public health surveillance systems. To learn more about PHIN, visit
the PHIN website.
- CDC will use its extramural research
program to facilitate analysis and use of NVDRS data.
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