National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS)

Data continues to be retrieved from all required data sources starting with the receipt of a monthly electronic death certificate file. Cases are identified using CDC required ICD-l 0 codes and a subset created for the KVDRS. Coroners' reports are continually requested, toxicology reports are received with coroners' reports or directly from the state toxicology laboratory, and information on cases involving a weapon is abstracted from three Kentucky State Police Forensic Crime Laboratories. The Kentucky State Police Information Division continues to provide information for statewide homicides and has begun providing information for statewide suicides as well. They will continue to provide the remaining information as it is transferred from in-house files to a database for the KVDRS by KSP personnel. In addition to the KSP electronic file, the KVDRS receives local law enforcement reports from the two largest cities in the state: The Louisville Metro Police and The Lexington Metro Police Department. Child Fatality Review reports are added to Kentucky's pediatric module and plans are in place for more comprehensive and efficient data collection in this particular area. A KVDRS master tracking system of violent death data, in MSAccess®, allows for continuous tracking of data from all data sources by using established queries for each data source. The KVDRS Advisory Board continues to meet regularly as a whole and in subgroups. Dissemination activities include: requests via the KVDRS web-site, established columns with Lexington's Herald-Leader newspaper, and peer-reviewed publications.