Sign In
Welcome to the State of California 
Skip Navigation LinksHome > Programs > California's Violent Death Reporting System (CalVDRS)

California's Violent Death Reporting System (CalVDRS)

Mission/Vision

To better understand the circumstances and the risk factors that lead to violent deaths in California through the use of innovative, efficient data collection from the richest data sources on violent deaths.

Program Description

California is one of 17 states participating in the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), funded by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Under NVDRS, we contract with county health departments to collect data on violent deaths from four data sources – death certificates, coroner/medical examiner records, police reports, and crime laboratory records.  Traditionally, public health tries to understand these deaths by analyzing death certificates alone, which describe the victim but tell little about the circumstances.  To get a more complete picture of each death, we take advantage of all data sources available. 

Due to its size and decentralized government, however, California is the only state not funded statewide. With Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties participating, we currently have valuable information on approximately half the state’s violent deaths.  CalVDRS' long term goal is to expand statewide. It has secured a more practical model than the labor-intensive NVDRS that will allow for such expansion.

With California’s Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS), created in 2005 to allow counties to file death certificates online instead of mailing paper forms, we saw the opportunity to create an efficient statewide system. Using funds from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, we created a violent death supplement to death certificates in EDRS, which captures information from coroners on violent death.

The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) funded us to continue developing this system by allowing us to pay coroners to complete this supplement. As of 2008 ten counties are participating in this electronic supplement, boosting our data on violent deaths to approximately two-thirds of the state's total.  We are also using these funds to improve EDRS so that counties can transfer data electronically from any software to EDRS, instead of entering data directly into EDRS, possibly duplicating their own efforts.

Target Population

These data will be most valuable to inform legislators, public health professionals, community leaders, and violence prevention advocates of the most common risk factors for violent death and allow them to make sound decisions. 

Key Partners

  • Local health departments, county coroners, and law enforcement agencies, who all provide data and will benefit from learning more about violent deaths in their communities.
  • CDC, who funds our project and combines the data we collect for use nationally.
  • The California Wellness Foundation has a stake in our project and its future.
  • CA-EDRS is a key partner as we utilize this system to collect our data and fund improvements to the system.
  • Advocacy groups will be key partners as data are analyzed and used to make policy recommendations to prevent these deaths.

Recent Successes/Milestones

In the four years of funding, CalVDRS has expanded data collection from 3 cities to 15 counties, obtained additional funding to pursue its electronic data collection efforts, and used its progress to legitimize this system among data providers and other agencies throughout the state.

Contact

For more information, contact Jason Van Court at (916) 552-9849 or Jason.VanCourt@cdph.ca.gov

Data and Statistics