Data Dashboard Frequently Asked Questions

CDC's Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence Dashboard maximizes the use of local data. The dashboard displays timely information down to census tracts using provisional death data received from states and statistical modeling when the number of deaths in an area is 1-9.

Some census tracts have very few people living in them. To keep people's information private, CDC combined these areas into groups with at least 10,000 people. CDC does this with other dashboards, like the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network Data Explorer. The About the Data page provides more information about how census tract groups were formed.

In some areas of the country, particularly rural areas with smaller populations, the combined census tracts represent areas larger than counties. You can compare the county and census tract views to see which provides more detailed information.

County level counts are determined from the county of residence on the person's death certificate. The census tract of residence comes from geocoded address information; a small percentage (<2%) of addresses cannot be geocoded to a census tract due to incomplete or missing information.

The dashboard displays information on unintentional drug overdose deaths and drug overdose deaths with undetermined intent. Medical examiners and coroners classify drug overdose deaths as undetermined intent when there is not enough evidence to know if the overdose was intentional or unintentional. A small proportion of deaths fall in this category. We have combined unintentional and undetermined intent deaths to make sure potential unintentional overdose deaths are counted.

The dashboard displays information on suicide deaths from any cause (firearm, poisoning, suffocation, fall, cut/pierce, and all other methods). The dashboard displays information for firearm suicides separately because firearms are used in more than half of all suicides.

The dashboard displays information on homicide deaths from any cause (firearm, cut/pierce, suffocation, blunt injury, poisoning, and all other methods). The dashboard displays information for firearm homicides separately because firearms are used in more than 75% of all homicides.

The "all firearm injury deaths" category includes firearm injury deaths from suicide, homicide, unintentional injury, legal intervention, and undetermined intent.

The totals for firearm suicides and homicides might not add up to the total for all firearm injury deaths. The total number of firearm injury deaths also includes deaths from unintentional injuries, legal interventions, and injuries of undetermined intent.

When there are 1-9 deaths in an area, statistical modeling is used to calculate rates for two reasons: 1) it makes the rates more stable, and 2) it helps protect people's privacy. CDC uses modeling for other data products for overdose, suicide, and heart disease, among others. For details on how these rates are calculated, see Modeled rates.

The dashboard also works to protect privacy in scenarios where small numbers of deaths might be able to be calculated by subtracting values from smaller areas, such as the case where two census tracts fit perfectly within a county. In this rare situation, CDC provides a range for the number of deaths in these locations and reports the modeled rate.

Data in the dashboard is available through the data table provided underneath the visualization and on data.cdc.gov.

CDC is careful to protect people's privacy and avoid identifying individuals, especially when showing data in small areas. CDC is not including more detailed information about age, sex, race, or ethnicity in the dashboard at this time. For unintentional and undetermined intent drug overdose deaths, state level demographic and circumstantial data is available on CDC's State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS) dashboard. State level demographic information is also available through WISQARS and CDC WONDER for overdose, suicide, and homicide.