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
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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