The Maine Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), acting as a bona fide agent of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to continue collecting data on violent deaths in Maine. The purpose of the proposed Maine Violent Death Reporting System is to collect and disseminate accurate, timely, and high-quality surveillance data on all violent deaths in Maine using CDC guidelines, and the CDC web-based data entry system to inform violence prevention efforts in Maine and to ultimately reduce morbidity and mortality related to violence through data to action.
The Maine Violent Death Reporting System will focus on achieving five outcomes by the end of the funding cycle:
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 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 deaths and understand the social determinants of health in relation to violent death-related health disparities.
Data on violent deaths in Maine already reside in the OCME case files, will continue to be collected, quality checked, abstracted, and entered into the NVDRS as described in the funding announcement using the CDC case definition, schedule and guidelines. Maine’s centralized, statewide medical examiner system collects police reports on violent deaths as part of their routine investigations and shares data for the electronic death certificate with state Vital Records. Toxicology samples are submitted on a subset of these deaths and become part of the medical examiner files. Housing the MEVDRS at the OCME will keep to a minimum the effort and the cost for surveillance. Data will be aggregated, analyzed, and shared with the state injury prevention offices via public reports and a novel data dashboard and be accessible through the Maine Attorney General’s and the University of Maine’s website. These routine avenues for dissemination will be augmented with the guidance of the Advisory Group, to include public and professional presentations and publications.