NCJ Number
176942
Journal
American Journal of Preventive Medicine Volume: 15 Issue: 3S Dated: October 1998 Pages: 75-82
Date Published
1998
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Because assault injuries and deaths represent a major public health problem in New York City, but they are poorly understood and there is a dearth of information about them, an effort was made to develop and implement a low-cost, efficient, and permanent weapon-related injury surveillance system (WRISS).
Abstract
WRISS was established using a hierarchical exclusionary model to capture weapon-related mortality and morbidity data for the five boroughs of New York City. Data were obtained from the New York City Vital Statistics Office, the New York State Hospital discharge database, Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative Systems, hospital emergency departments, and the police department. An evaluation of WRISS found it is a simple surveillance system that depends on both existing data sources and active data collection. The system is flexible and allows assault injuries without weapons to be added to better reflect domestic assaults. In addition, the system is efficient and cost- effective and is particularly suited to big cities with many assault injuries. Its low cost and obvious importance as a public health tool have allowed for its institutionalization. 3 references, 3 tables, and 1 figure