The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #70919

Judy Schaechter, MD, Department of Pediatrics/Division of Adolescent Medicine, University of Miami, PO Box 016820, Miami, FL 33101, 305-243-5880, Jschaech@med.miami.edu

Miami’s Violent Injury Surveillance System (VISS) was mandated by the county’s Youth Crime Task Force, which expressed a need for objective data to design and evaluate violence prevention strategies. VISS collects data from the Medical Examiner, Vital Statistics, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, local police departments and crime labs.

VISS is a community responsive data system operating as a partner in prevention. Findings are not only available to the community, but are actively disseminated. This is done in a variety of manners; the most important of which is partnering with community organizations and violence prevention groups. The county commission uses VISS mapped data to better target resource allocation for prevention efforts in neighborhoods of highest need. NOT ONE MORE, a coalition of violence prevention service providers, utilize data for grant writing and program evaluation. Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), uses the system to help set priorities and to evaluate its prevention efforts. Specifically, this has meant South Florida’s PSN’s inclusion of suicide and youth access to firearms among its priority list for prevention.

Other findings with important prevention implications include: ¼ of the guns used to kill children were owned by the child’s caretaker; Half of all children <10 killed by firearms where targeted because of intimate partner violence against their mother; All of the women killed by guns in 2001 were shot by people known to them.

These and other data are being tracked and shared to raise awareness, allocate resources, target prevention, foster collaboration and evaluate prevention efforts.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the elements of a violent death or violent injury statistics system.
• Discuss initial findings of this system, their implications and applications.
• Appreciate the necessary research and community partnerships for the implementation of a violent injury statistics system.
• Recognize the benefits of the system at both the local and national levels.

Keywords: Violence Prevention, Data/Surveillance

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.