Advancing Surveillance of Violent Deaths Using the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS)

Violence is a major public health problem. Over 67,000 people died violently in the U.S. in 2019. These violent deaths included 47,511 suicides and 19,141 homicides. Violent deaths have been estimated to cost more than $90 billion in medical care and lost productivity in the U.S. Violence is preventable. Interventions, strategies, and policies are increasingly available that stop violence before it happens. Preventing violence is a critical public health goal because violence inflicts a substantial toll on individuals, families, and communities throughout the U.S. In order to prevent violence, we must first know the facts about violent deaths. This NOFO builds on previous and current work within the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct surveillance of violence and to prevent violence. In 2002, CDC began implementing the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS, OMB No. 0920-0607). NVDRS is a state-based surveillance system that uses CDC guidelines and a CDC web-based data entry system to link data from death certificates (DC), coroner/medical examiner (C/ME) reports (including toxicology reports), and law enforcement (LE) reports to assist each participating state, territory, and district to design and implement tailored prevention and intervention efforts (See https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/datasources/nvdrs/index.html). As a state-based system, recipients collect and analyze data for their target area while CDC provides guidance to ensure the data are collected in a standardized manner and supplies access to a web-based data entry system. All recipients share their de-identified data with CDC. CDC combines recipient data into a multi-state database that informs national partners. NVDRS summary data from 2003 to 2018 are available at: http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/nvdrs.html.