The Injury and Violence Prevention Branch Surveillance Unit maintains statewide injury and
violence related surveillance by providing emergency department, hospital discharge, mortality,
and survey data to monitor the incidence of and risk factors for fatal and nonfatal injury.
The branch provides this information to North Carolina’s health professionals, citizens,
lawmakers and others interested in injury and violence prevention in the state. Injury and
violence surveillance data provide the epidemiologic foundation for effective, data-driven
injury and violence prevention and intervention planning. The unit compiles information from
several on-going and regularly collected data systems.
In addition, the Injury Surveillance Unit:
Monitors the injury landscape: Collects, analyzes, and interprets injury
morbidity and mortality data to characterize the burden of injury in North Carolina; learns
from community partners to further assess the burden of injury in North Carolina.
Assures and improves data quality:
Monitors the completeness, timeliness, and quality of core data sources for
appropriate use in injury surveillance and internal data processing and quality
improvement procedures.
Builds and maintains a strong data infrastructure for injury surveillance
Expands injury surveillance: In keeping with best practices (PH 3.0),
continues to expand surveillance activities on mechanisms of injury and through the
incorporation of and linkage to additional data sources.
Disseminates data: Disseminates data to injury prevention stakeholders and
responds to data requests.
Shares and acts for injury prevention: Produces periodic surveillance
updates and data reports related to injury intervention program progress and effectiveness,
and in coordination with Statewide Injury Strategic Plan and other cooperative agreements.
Assesses and acts for equity: Assesses and acts to improve our data
products, training, and surveillance practices to better incorporate equity considerations,
including but not limited to the surveillance of health disparities and centering the needs
of marginalized populations and various sociodemographic groups.
Injury Surveillance Technical Notes – Provides an overview on injury
surveillance methods and data sources
ICD-10-CM Coding Transition Overview – Describes important changes to the
structure of hospitalization and emergency department data and the impact on injury
surveillance.
Leading Causes of Injury in
North Carolina, 2023
(PPTX, 864 KB) – Data slides that provide an overview of the
leading causes of injury death, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits for
North Carolina residents in 2023. Updated 04/04/25
Leading Causes of Injury in
North Carolina, 2022
(PPTX, 604 KB) – Data slides that provide an overview of the
leading causes of injury death, hospitalizations, and emergency department
visits for
North Carolina residents in 2022. Updated
02/03/25
These reports show the top five causes of injury deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency
department (ED) visits by county, and are presented by age group.
Statewide Leading Causes of Injury -
Updated
03/25/25
These reports include charts of statewide leading causes of injury by age group and
tables showing statewide leading causes of injury by age, gender, and race/ethnicity for
death certificate, hospitalization, and ED visit data.
Death Data: Leading Causes of Injury Death by Age, Gender, and
Race/Ethnicity
These ORION reports include county-level data on injury deaths, hospitalizations, and ED
visits from 2018-2022 broken out by injury mechanism and injury intent.
