The Illinois Department of Public Health launched a new dashboard, which methodically presents statewide data about violent deaths and firearm injury rates, last month. The violent deaths data was sourced from the Illinois Violent Death Reporting System, which is operated by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
IDPH syndromic surveillance, defined on their website as health related data received when illness begins, provided emergency department visit data about firearm injuries. This data collection system was partly funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advancing Violence Epidemiology in Real-Time grant.
The dashboard was designed by Understory Consulting, a research and policy consulting firm. It was funded by the Joyce Foundation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on gun violence prevention related programs, among many others, in the Great Lakes region.
Before Illinois, the Foundation funded similar dashboards in Minnesota and Michigan. However, the Illinois dashboard is the first to include data on non-fatal firearm injuries, according to Tim Daly, director of the Foundation’s gun violence prevention and justice reform program.
“That was a huge difference in the Illinois dashboard, and we think that is a critical innovation because you need to know both to really understand policy and prevention strategies,” Daly said.
The Violent Deaths Dashboard displays data from 2015 to 2022, allowing users to explore total death counts and rates. It classifies deaths by various demographics, including sex, race, ethnicity and age range. Users can also filter data by the manner of death. Separate tabs provide focused insights on suicide, homicide, firearm-related deaths, intimate partner problem related deaths and child deaths.
The Firearm Injury Rates Dashboard, on the other hand, is a singular tab that allows users to filter data according to the patient’s residence, sex, race/ethnicity and age range.
Feinberg Prof. Maryann Mason, who helped work on the dashboard, said data like this is a form of prevention and thus foundational to any public health approach.
“In order to understand a public health problem, we need the data to understand the prevalence of it, what the risk and protective factors are, to come up with interventions and evaluate them and scale it up so that preventions can reach people most at risk,” Mason said.
The dashboard revealed several key takeaways, including that homicide rates are highest among Black or African Americans, who account for 73.5% of homicide deaths in Illinois. Additionally, the City of Chicago had the highest rate of non-fatal firearm injuries, with more than 350 cases reported for every 100,000 emergency department visits.
Dr. Sarah Patrick of the IDPH said a major concern for the department has been the rising suicide rates in Illinois, as reflected in the dashboard. She stated that the IDPH received a “comprehensive suicide prevention” grant from the CDC and is currently working on disseminating related data on suicide, hospitalizations and emergency department visits.
“We have more that we’re working on and trying to validate these data to make sure that they are actually pointing the compass in the right way,” Patrick said. “We’re just very excited to get people using it, seeing it and having them give us additional feedback on what would be useful to them.”
Daly echoed this sentiment, adding that he’s hopeful that insights provided by the dashboard will help policymakers target their policies and interventions more narrowly.
He noted that since its launch, several policymakers and stakeholders have responded positively to the data, particularly in highlighting gun violence across the state — not just in Chicago.
“The biggest surprise we’ve heard as we’ve talked to partners has been them understanding how gun violence is present outside of Chicago, what the volume of firearm suicides are for example, and where and whom,” Daly said. “I think it’s changing people’s perspectives as to the full scope of the gun violence problem that we have in the state.”
Email: mishaoberoi2027@u.northwestern.edu
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