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Utah Violent Death Reporting System

Violent deaths represent a serious public health problem. Violent deaths include:

  • Homicides
  • Suicides
  • Deaths of undetermined intent
  • Unintentional firearm-related deaths
  • Deaths due to legal intervention (i.e., fatal injuries inflicted by the police or other law-enforcing agents)

In direct response to this concern, Utah became one of 18 states participating in the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) in 2004 (data collection began in 2005). The NVDRS states are funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Utah Violent Death Reporting System (UT-VDRS) is surveillance system that collects detailed facts from different sources about the same incident. This information is collected from:

  • Death certificates
  • Medical examiner records
  • Police reports
  • Crime lab records
  • Supplemental homicide reports

The information is then entered into a useable, anonymous database. De-identified data is then “pushed” daily to the national database which is maintained and supported by the CDC. As NVDRS data become available, state and local violence prevention practitioners use it to guide their prevention programs, policies, and practices.

2007 award2008 award 2009 award

Utah has won the “Excellence in Collecting the Most Timely and Complete Violent Death Data” for 2007, 2008, and 2009. States that participate in the NVDRS were measured against three criteria for the award:

  1. All violent death incidents initiated within 6 months of the date of death. The CDC calculates this measure by subtracting the date of death from the date of incident initiation.
  2. All medical examiner detail loaded within 18 months of the end of the calendar year. The CDC calculates this measure using the percent of incidents having a medical examiner report loaded within 18 months of the calendar year.
  3. All police report incident detail loaded within 18 months of the end of the calendar year. The CDC calculates this measure using the percent of incidents having a police report loaded within 18 months of the calendar year.