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Welcome to the Injury and Violence Prevention Program web site. Our mission is to collaborate with public and private partners to develop, implement and evaluate programs that reduce death and disability caused by injuries.
Injury surveillance and epidemiologic research is conducted using data acquired from death certificates, medical examiners, hospital discharge records, emergency department records, police investigations, traffic crash reports and survey data.
From these data we monitor the incidence, trends, risk factors and
circumstances of injuries and target communities at-risk for certain
types of injury. Injury reports and summaries are disseminated to
multi-disciplinary partnerships and used to prioritize prevention
efforts and evaluate injury prevention initiatives and policies.
The Miami-Dade County Injury Surveillance System is supported, in
part, through funding from The Children's Trust and the Health Foundation of South Florida.
Miami-Dade Injury Facts
Injury is a major public health problem in Miami-Dade County. Injuries were the leading cause of death for county residents between the ages 1 to 44 years in 2006. Further, for every injury-related death to a county resident there were an additional 11 nonfatal hospitalizations due to an injury.
-Injuries were responsible for 1,267 resident deaths in 2006, an increase of 13% from 1,119 injury-related deaths in 2005.
-Unintentional (accidental) injuries accounted for 838 (66%) of injury deaths, followed by homicides (236 deaths, 19%) and suicides (191 deaths, 15%).
-Motor vehicle traffic crashes (31%) were the leading cause of injury-related death followed by firearm injuries (21%) and falls (14%).
-Firearms took the lives of 269 county residents, an increase of 23% from the 218 firearm deaths that occurred in 2005. Sixty-one percent of these were homicides, 39% suicides and 1% unintentional. Since 2000, firearms have been responsible for 1,677 deaths to county residents.
-Motorcycle deaths to county residents increased by 14 deaths compared to 2005 (65 vs. 51 deaths).
-Drowning is the leading cause of all death to residents aged 1-4 years old and was responsible for 3 deaths in 2006. The most common site for a child drowning death is a residential swimming pool.
-Suffocation is the leading cause of injury-related death to infants aged less than 1 year. Eight county infants died from suffocation in 2006, 5 while they slept in a bed or crib.
-Twenty-seven pedestrian deaths occurred to residents aged 65 years and older. Since 2000, there has been an average of 31 pedestrian deaths every year to the county’s population over 65 years of age.
-Injuries were responsible for 13,892 nonfatal resident hospitalizations in 2006.
-Falls were responsible for 45% of all nonfatal injury hospitalizations followed by motor vehicle traffic crashes (17%) and poisonings (11%).
-1,818 residents aged 65 and older were hospitalized for hip fractures, the vast majority due to falls.
-Nonfatal hospitalized injuries were responsible for more than 645 million dollars in direct hospitalization charges in 2006.
-Injuries were responsible for 143,760 nonfatal emergency department (ED) visits to county residents in 2005 (most recent data available).
-Falls (27%) were the leading cause of nonfatal injury ED visits followed by being struck by or against an object/person (15%) and motor vehicle traffic crashes (12%).
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