To establish the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) in Alabama the Alabama Department of Public Health is partnering with the Alabama Center for Health Statistics, the Alabama Department of Forensics, the Jefferson County Coroner/Medical Examiner?s Office, the Alabama Coroner?s Association, and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to collect data on violent deaths in the state. Data will include death certificates, autopsy and toxicology reports, medical examiner and coroner reports, and police reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?s (CDC) web-based NVDRS will allow for the collection and dissemination of surveillance data on violent deaths which in turn will provide a viable outcome of improving the planning, implementation, and evaluation of violence prevention programs. NVDRS will also serve the purpose of allowing the state to analyze the characteristics and trends of violent deaths which no other entity in the state is currently performing. The program will target all violent deaths in the state?s 67 counties occurring during 2022. The goals for NVDRS will include creating and maintaining a continually improving surveillance system that collects high quality and comprehensive violent death information in a timely manner that complies with CDC guidelines, and disseminating NVDRS data to partners and the public to support violence prevention and explore innovative methods of accessing, reporting, and sharing data. Strategies to complete these goals will include: creating a plan to implement NVDRS, collecting and abstracting data required by NVDRS, assessing the current death toll of violence within Alabama using death certificate information and additional data uploaded to NVDRS to show how Alabama rates compare to national rates, generating an annual report for the state using de-identified NVDRS data, and exploring innovative methods of accessing, reporting, and sharing data to include violence prevention advoc
acy groups. The Surveillance and Prevention Branch already has three great pre-established partnerships that will benefit NVDRS. Those three partnerships are with the Alabama Child Death Review System, the Suicide and Prevention Program, and SUDORS. Collaboration with these three programs will assist in expanding the use of NVDRS data.