The US National Violent Death Reporting System: domestic and international lessons for violence injury surveillance

Abstract

Objectives: This article reviews and comments on the development, strengths and limitations of the US National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) from a variety of domestic and international perspectives. Methods: The authors were provided preliminary copies of the manuscripts in this special edition and examined them to understand and put in context the elements and uses of the NVDRS so far. Their comments are based on their reading and interpretation of these papers plus their own combined experience in injury and public health surveillance from four different countries: the US, Colombia, Australia, and South Africa. Results: The NVDRS is bigger than the sum of its parts because it links existing data from multiple sources. Its adoption of modern relational database technologies offers advantages over traditional injury surveillance databases and creates new opportunities for understanding, collaboration, and partnerships. Challenges include overcoming resource limitations so that it can become a truly national system, measuring and improving its sensitivity and comparability, and the need to examine mortality in context with serious non-fatal violent events. Conclusions: The NVDRS is an important work in progress for the US. Each country should examine its own needs, traditions, resources, and existing infrastructure when deciding what kind of violence surveillance system to develop. However, collaboration in developing common definitions and classifications provides an important foundation for international comparisons.

Assessing Legal Strains and Risk of Suicide Using Archived Court Data

“…Court data are a potentially valuable source of exposure data for the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), an initiative of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that links death certificates to other public records, including police and medical examiner reports, to better understand violent deaths (Weis, Guiterrez, Harrison, & Matzopoulos, 2006). In the Utah Youth Suicide Study, Gray et al (2002) utilized the statewide VDRS and found a high rate of juvenile justice system involvement: of the 151 youth suicides in the study, 95 (63%) had contact with the juvenile justice system.…”

The impact of child maltreatment and intimate partner violence surveillance initiatives

“…Highlighted in this article are several lessons that other countries can learn from the experience of these states in trying out these CM and IPV surveillance projects. Although different nations' capacities to carry out a comprehensive array of data gathering activities can differ widely, it has been shown that even limited efforts can yield important results in public awareness and leadership commitment to addressing the problem (Horan & Mallonee, 2003;Weiss, Gutierrez, Harrison, & Matzopoulos, 2006).…”

The National Violent Death Reporting System: overview and future directions

“…The establishment of the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) was a culmination of events and discussions regarding violence prevention that have taken place over the past several decades 8. In 1979, the US Surgeon General's Report, Healthy People , identified violence and stress as priority areas for public health 9.…”

“…The methodology of the NVDRS has been described previously in detail,17–19 and NVDRS overviews have been published in previous Injury Prevention articles or supplements in 2004 and 2006 8 17–19 Figure 2. illustrates the typical flow of information in NVDRS.…”