Cdc, States Team Up On Violent-Death Database
The Transportation Department has a Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) that compiles data about U.S. car-crash fatalities according to 88 different query-entry points. Over 100 elements about a particular subject are entered.
FARS data has supported the mandating of seat belts, air bags, safer designs in cars, and other policy initiatives, developments, and goals. Since FARS has been up and running, traffic fatalities per million U.S. miles has fallen by roughly 50 percent.
Health departments in Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) plan to pool their own data to create a unique database on violent deaths.
A CDC-sponsored National Violent Death Reporting System hopefully will draw in all U.S. states and Washington D.C., says CDC epidemiologist Len Paulozzi. Harvard’s School of Public Health has pioneered a similar database since 1999 called the National Violent Injury Statistics System. The CDC system will lack names and addresses but offer important details and data.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Government Computer News (02/19/03); Walsh, Trudy .