Harmon Katherine

Suicide is a leading cause of mortality in the United States, causing about 45,000 deaths annually. Research suggests that universal screening in health care settings may be beneficial for prevention, but few studies have combined detailed suicide circumstances with ED encounter data to better understand care-seeking behavior prior to death.

Objective: To identify potential emergency department (ED) visits prior to suicide deaths in North Carolina (NC) and describe pre-suicide care-seeking in EDs.

Over the last few decades, the United States has made considerable progress in decreasing the incidence of motor vehicle occupants injured and killed in traffic collisions.1 However, there is still a need for continued motor vehicle crash (MVC) injury surveillance, particularly for vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists. In NC, the average annual number of pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes increased by 13.5 percent during the period 2011-2015, as compared to 2006-2010.2 Therefore, the Carolina Center for Health Informatics (CCHI), as part of a NC Governor's Highway Safety Program-funded project to improve statewide MVC injury surveillance, developed and evaluated four ICD-10-CM based case definitions for use with NC DETECT, NC's statewide syndromic surveillance system.

Objective: To evaluate four ICD-10-CM based case definitions designed to capture pedestrian and bicycle crash-related emergency department (ED) visits in North Carolina's statewide syndromic surveillance system, NC DETECT.

In North Carolina there has been an escalation of poisoning deaths. In 2011, the number of fatal poisonings was 1,368 deaths, with 91% classified as drug overdoses with the majority of those due to opioid analgesics.[1] Far greater numbers of drug overdoses result in hospitalization, emergency department (ED) or outpatient clinic visits, or resolve without the individual seeking medical attention. Although public health authorities have long employed death data for drug overdose surveillance in NC, little attention has been paid to the use of ED data for this purpose. Through the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT), NC collects information on 99.5% of all acute-care ED visits across the state, primarily for syndromic surveillance purposes. Despite the timeliness and completeness of this data system, drug overdose surveillance is a challenge due to lack of a standardized definition for the positive identification of opioid overdoses. In this study we used NC DETECT ED data to describe visits due to drug, and more specifically, opioid overdoses. Objective: To describe the epidemiologic characteristics for emergency department visits due to drug overdoses in North Carolina.

Falls are a leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injury in NC. As the size of the older adult population is predicted to increase over the next few decades, it is likely that the incidence of falls-related morbidity and mortality will increase in tandem. In order to address this public health emergency, the Injury and Violence Prevention Branch (IVPB) of the NC Division of Public Health has partnered with the Carolina Center for Health Informatics (CCHI) in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to perform falls surveillance activities. This abstract describes some of the specific research and surveillance activities currently ongoing in NC.

Objective:

To describe how a successful partnership between state public health and a university organization has used epidemiologic data, such as mortality, hospital discharge, and emergency department (ED) visit data, to inform falls prevention activities in North Carolina (NC).

Violence-related injuries are a major source of morbidity and mortality in NC. From 2005-2014, suicide and homicide ranked as NC's 11th and 16th causes of death, respectively. In 2014, there were 1,932 total violent deaths, of which 1,303 were due to suicide (67%), 536 due to homicide (28%), and 93 due to another mechanism of violent injury (5%). These deaths represent a fraction of the total number of violence-related injuries in NC.1 This study examined ED visit data captured by NC DETECT to identify and describe violent injuries treated in NC EDs and compare/contrast with fatalities reported by NC-VDRS.

Objective:

To describe violent injuries treated in North Carolina (NC) emergency departments (EDs) and compare to deaths reported by the NC Violent Death Reporting System (NC-VDRS).