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Notice to Readers Report on Survey Regarding Collection and Use of Cause of Injury Data by States

In October 1997, the Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) conducted a survey of all 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), and Puerto Rico to assess the availability of external cause-of-injury data in statewide hospital discharge data systems (HDDS), hospital emergency department data systems (HEDDS), and other ambulatory care data systems. The report on the findings of the analysis, How States are Collecting and Using Cause of Injury Data (1), includes recommendations for improving the quality and availability of statewide injury-related data for injury-prevention activities.

The findings in the survey indicated that 1) 36 states and DC routinely collect external cause-of-injury data in their HDDS, and 23 of the states have laws or mandates requiring external cause-of-injury coding; and 2) 11 states have developed the capacity to provide external cause-of-injury data on injury-related visits in their statewide HEDDS, and nine of those states have laws or mandates requiring external cause-of-injury coding. A coordinated effort among states is needed to develop standard methods for collecting, coding, analyzing, and presenting injury-related data from statewide data systems. Timely dissemination of uniform, population-based injury morbidity data to hospital administrators, public health professionals, and policy makers will enhance their usefulness for injury-prevention efforts.

This survey was funded by the APHA through a mini-grant to the Trauma Foundation at San Francisco General Hospital and was conducted in partnership with CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) and National Center for Health Statistics. A copy of the report is available from the Office of Statistics and Programming, NCIPC, telephone (770) 488-4656, e-mail jmc1@cdc.gov, or from the Trauma Foundation site on the World-Wide Web, http://www.traumafdn.org/injuries/apha4.html.

Reference

  1. Annest JL, Conn JM, McLoughlin E, Fingerhut LA, Pickett D, Gallagher S. How states are collecting and using cause of injury data. San Francisco, California: Trauma Foundation at San Francisco General Hospital, 1998. World-Wide Web site http://www.traumafdn.org/injuries/apha4.html. Accessed September 14, 1998.


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