RECOMMENDED DATA ELEMENTS FOR FIREARM-RELATED INJURY SURVEILLANCE

During 1994, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fund ed seven states to develop and evaluate surveillance systems for firea rm-related injuries. In addition, New York City and California had rel ated experience with firearm-related injury surveillance. At the time these nine jurisdictions began developing their surveillance systems, no standardized definitions or recommendations IL ere available about the best methods or procedures of collecting data or suggested data el ements of a firearm-related injury surveillance system. The nine juris dictions and CDC developed a list of recommended data elements (RDEs) for fatal and nonfatal firearm-related injuries. Mie describe the proc ess used to develop the RDEs, the 21 data elements suggested by the fu nded projects, the data sources that may be able to provide those data elements, and an indication of which sources may be most useful. We e ncourage all developing surveillance systems to strive to include thes e data elements, although some of the elements will be more easily att ainable for fatal injury events than nonfatal ones, and no single data source will be able to provide all the desired information about both morbidity and mortality from firearm-related injuries. The RDEs capit alize on the preliminary experiences of the small group of jurisdictio ns, but they need to be pilot tested and revised as we collect more in formation about how well these elements capture the desired informatio n and whether the information obtained is useful.