Nebraska Violent Death Reporting System - The purpose of the Nebraska Violent Death Reporting System (NeVDRS) is to continue operations regarding data collection and abstraction of violent death data and dissemination of accurate, timely, and comprehensive surveillance data on all violent deaths in Nebraska using CDC guidelines and the CDC web-based data entry system. The ultimate goal of the collection and dissemination of comprehensive violent death information will raise awareness, provide opportunities for collaboration, and streamline violence prevention efforts in Nebraska. Ultimately, these aforementioned efforts will result in a reduction of violent death. There are five key outcomes associated with this project. They are as follows: 1. Improved completeness, timeliness, and quality of violent death surveillance data. 2. Stronger relationships with key partners. 3. Increased access to NVDRS data by the public and partners to inform their violence and possibly injury prevention activities. 4. Increased use of violent death surveillance data by partners to inform violence prevention, programmatic, and policy decisions. 5. Increased ability to describe the geographic distribution of violent death and understand the social determinants of health in relation to violent death-related health disparities. To accomplish these key outcomes, NeVDRS will engage in four key strategies and activities. a. First, NeVDRS will use the CDC case definition to identify violent deaths on a biweekly basis from death certificate data. These deaths include the following: homicide, suicide, unintentional firearm deaths, deaths of undetermined intent, and legal intervention. Decedents will be assigned a NeVDRS case number and non-identifiable death certificate information will be abstracted. Multiple fatality incidents will be linked to each other using injury location, injury time, and narrative information from the death certificate. Law enforcement reports, coroner reports, and toxicology reports will be requested from appropriate geographic regions. These reports will be linked with the NeVDRS case number and abstracted in accordance with the CDC guidance. NeVDRS has established relationships with key data providers in Nebraska, accounting for over 90% of applicable deaths. b. Second, NeVDRS data will be analyzed, interpreted, and disseminated annually to characterize trends in violence mortality, understand disparities, and inform violence prevention efforts. Efforts regarding this strategy will be monitored by the number of factsheets, publications, reports, presentations, and data requests. Efforts will be made to further bolster stakeholder engagement with this grant funding. c. Third, NeVDRS will engage in data-driven planning, monitoring, and evaluation to support continuous surveillance improvement. This will include revisiting data completeness, timeliness, and quality for included violent death surveillance data. Each year since the initial funding was received in 2017, NeVDRS has improved in these categories. d. Fourth, NeVDRS will expand on the current capacity for epidemiologic science, geocoding, and conducting linkage to data with information on social determinants of health. To do this a thorough initial assessment of programmatic capabilities will be conducted. Further, collaborations with other key agencies will be leveraged to link NeVDRS data to the prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP), hospital discharge data (HDD), and emergency medical services (EMS) data. This linkage will greatly improve toxicology report prescription drug information in NeVDRS, as well as enhance understanding of prior mental health or medical treatment and suicidal ideation/attempts resulting in hospital visits. Programmatic staff are focused on enhancing geocoding abilities to conceptualize and depict violent death concerns and trends geographically in an effort to enhance violence prevention efforts.
