Injury and Violence

Alabama’s #11 Health Concern

Alabamians identified injury and violence as the eleventh greatest current health concern in Alabama. Fortunately, it is possible to obtain comprehensive data on the status of injury and violence from death certificate data collected by ADPH’s Center for Health Statistics on homicide mortality, accidental poisoning mortality, and motor vehicle accident mortality. These data are complete and comprehensive.

Injury and violence are the leading cause of potential years of life lost because these deaths generally occur in younger people. Minorities are over represented in homicide mortality. Alabama has a very high motor vehicle accident mortality death rate and homicide mortality rate compared to the nation. In addition, males are more likely to die of the causes.

Alabama Injury and Violence Highlights

Injury mortality was the fifth leading cause of death in 2013, with homicide ranking fifteenth. Alabama has a higher rate of injury and violence than the nation. These causes of death are especially tragic because they disproportionately affect younger people, resulting in a large number of potential years of life lost. Accidental poisoning mortality has increased by 2.5 times since 2001-2003. In addition, homicide is particularly harmful to the African American population, as they are five times as likely to be victims as Caucasians. Wearing seatbelts could conceivably prevent many of the motor vehicle deaths. A focus on anger management could hopefully prevent some homicide deaths.

Health Indicators

The following indicators have been selected for use in developing a benchmark or starting point for measuring the current state of and monitoring future changes regarding injury and violence in the population of Alabama:

• Homicide Mortality Rate, 2011-2013 | Excel Spreadsheet
• Accidental Poisoning Mortality Rate, 2011-2013 | Excel Spreadsheet
• Motor Vehicle Mortality Rate, 2011-2013 | Excel Spreadsheet

Resources

• Bureau of Justice Statistics (Violent Crime)
• CDC (Alcohol and Public Health)
• CDC (Drug Overdose in the United States - Fact Sheet)
• CDC (National Center for Environmental Health)
• CDC (Older Adult Falls Publications)
• CDC (Preventing Drug Overdoses)
• CDC (Preventing Falls: How to Develop Community-Based Fall Prevention Programs for Older Adults)
• CDC (STEADI: Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths and Injuries)
• CDC (Suicide Prevention)
• CDC (Violence Prevention)
• College Drinking - Changing the Culture
• Distraction.gov
• ElderCare.gov (Preventing Falls at Home)
• EPA
• HRSA (Poison Help)
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service (Violent Crimes>Gun Violence)
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Drive Sober)
• National Institute on Drug Abuse (Alcohol)
• National Institute on Drug Abuse (Prevention Research)
• National Institute of Justice (Gun Violence Prevention)
• National Safety Council
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
• OSHA (Fall Prevention Campaign)
• OSHA (Fall Prevention Training Guide)