Violence is now clearly recognized as a public health problem. Intentional injuries ranked among the top six leading causes of death for Illinois residents aged 1-44 in 2013. The Illinois Department of Public Health currently collects data on violent injuries and deaths from emergency medical services reports, death certificates, coroner/ medical examiner reports, law enforcement reports, and crime lab reports. However, syndromic surveillance provides near real-time data on violence-related emergency department visits that would increase the timeliness and quality of data available for public health interventions.
Objective
Our objective was to measure the incidence and prevalence of intentional violent injury and death using Illinois’ syndromic surveillance system.