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National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS)

Violence takes its toll on individuals, families, and communities throughout the United States. No one is immune to violence. It affects people across the lifespan-from infants to the elderly. Each year, about 50,000 violent deaths occur in this country. Violent deaths, including homicides and suicides, cost the United States more than $52 billion in medical care and lost productivity every year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to preventing violent deaths in the United States. Unfortunately, achieving this goal has been hampered by fragmented and incomplete information on the circumstances surrounding homicides and suicides. Currently available data do not always provide the information needed to accurately assess the factors associated with violent death. For example, death certificates provide data on the victim but do not provide information on the perpetrator. This information is more commonly found in police reports.

In 2002 CDC received funding to establish the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). NVDRS collects data on violent deaths from a variety of sources, including death certificates, police reports, medical examiner and coroner reports, and crime laboratories. Individually, these sources provide fragmented data that explain violence only in a narrow context. Together, these sources offer a more comprehensive picture of the circumstances surrounding a homicide or suicide. As a result, NVDRS provides insight into the optimal points for intervention, thus improving violence prevention efforts.

• informing decision makers and program planners about the magnitude, trends, and characteristics of violent deaths so appropriate prevention efforts can be put into place; and
• evaluating state-based prevention programs and strategies.

NVDRS has four main objectives:

• to link records on violent deaths that occurred in the same incident to help identify risk factors for multiple homicides or homicides-suicides;
• to provide timely preliminary information on violent deaths (e.g., basic counts of murders and suicides) through faster data retrieval-currently, vital statistics data are not available until two years after a death;
• to describe in detail the circumstances that may have contributed to a violent death; and
• to better characterize perpetrators, including their relationships to victim(s).

CDC Project Officer:  Leroy Frazier

          Lfrazier1@cdc.gov

          404-488-1507