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Increasing disease rates, limited funding, and the ever-growing scientific basis for intervention demand the use of proven strategies to improve population health. Public health practitioners must be ready to implement an evidence-based approach in their work to meet health goals and sustain necessary resources. We researched easily accessible and time-efficient tools for implementing an evidence-based public health (EBPH) approach to improve population health. Several tools have been developed to meet EBPH needs, including free online resources in the following topic areas: training and planning tools, US health surveillance, policy tracking and surveillance, systematic reviews and evidence-based guidelines, economic evaluation, and gray literature. Key elements of EBPH are engaging the community in assessment and decision making; using data and information systems systematically; making decisions on the basis of the best available peer-reviewed evidence (both quantitative and qualitative); applying program-planning frameworks (often based in health-behavior theory); conducting sound evaluation; and disseminating what is learned.

BackgroundImplementation of the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) in the U.S. on October 1, 2015 was a significant policy change with the potential to affect established injury morbidity trends. This study used data from a single state to demonstrate 1) the use of a statistical method to estimate the effect of this coding transition on injury hospitalization trends, and 2) interpretation of significant changes in injury trends in the context of the structural and conceptual differences between ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM, the new ICD-10-CM-specific coding guidelines, and proposed ICD-10-CM-based framework for reporting of injuries by intent and mechanism. Segmented regression analysis was used for statistical modeling of interrupted time series monthly data to evaluate the effect of the transition to ICD-10-CM on Kentucky hospitalizations’ external-cause-of-injury completeness (percentage of records with principal injury diagnoses supplemented with external-cause-of-injury codes), as well as injury hospitalization trends by intent or mechanism, January 2012–December 2017.ResultsThe segmented regression analysis showed an immediate significant drop in external-cause-of-injury completeness during the transition month, but returned to its pre-transition levels in November 2015. There was a significant immediate change in the percentage of injury hospitalizations coded for unintentional (3.34%) and undetermined intent (− 3.39%). There were immediate significant changes in the level of injury hospitalization rates due to poisoning, suffocation, struck by/against, other transportation, unspecified mechanism, and other specified not elsewhere classifiable mechanism. Significant change in slope after the transition (without immediate level change) was identified for assault, firearm, cut/pierce, and motor vehicle traffic injury rates. The observed trend changes reflected structural and conceptual features of ICD-10-CM coding (e.g., poisoning and suffocations are now captured via diagnosis codes only), new coding guidelines (e.g., requiring coding of injury intent as “accidental” if it is unknown or unspecified), and CDC proposed external-cause-of-injury code groupings by injury intent and mechanism. Researchers can replicate this methodology assessing trends in injuries or other ICD-10-CM-coded conditions using administrative billing data sets.ConclusionsThe CDC ‘s Proposed Framework for Presenting Injury Data Using ICD-10-CM External Cause of Injury Codes provided a logical transition from the ICD-9-CM-based matrix on injury hospitalization trends by intent and mechanism. Our findings are intended to raise awareness that changes in the ICD-10-CM coding system must be understood to assure accurate interpretation of injury trends.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40621-018-0165-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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