Injury and Violence Prevention Epidemiology

Child Fatality Review Team (CFRT) Home Page

​​​​​The Injury Prevention Unit analytics team receives child death certificates from DSHS Center for Health Statistics (CHS) and creates quarterly reports to share with local CFRT teams across the state. Local CFRTs use the reports to identify child deaths to review.

The Injury Prevention Unit facilitates the State Child Fatality Review Team (SCFRT) Committee. This committee analyzes aggregate child fatality data collected by local CFRTs and submits CFRT data and recommendations to the Texas Legislature biannually.

Available Dashboards and Reports:

• State Child Fatality Review Team Committee Biennial Report - April 2024
• State Child Fatality Review Team Committee Biennial Report - April 2022 

Additional Information:

• The National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention – Keeping Kids Alive

EMS and Trauma Registries (EMSTR) Home Page

EMSTR is a statewide surveillance system collecting reportable event data from EMS providers, hospitals, justices of the peace, medical examiners, and rehabilitation facilities. Texas is home to one of the largest EMS registries in the U.S. with more than 4 million EMS runs received annually.

EMSTR includes four registries: the EMS Registry; the Acute Traumatic Injury Registry; the Traumatic Brain Injury Registry / Spinal Cord Injury Registry; and the Submersion Registry.

Entities required to report data to EMSTR: EMS providers, hospitals (both designated trauma facilities and non-designated facilities), acute rehabilitation facilities (long-term acute care / LTAC and post-acute rehabilitation (rehab) facilities), justices of the peace (JPs), medical examiners (MEs), and physicians.

Available Dashboards and Reports:

• EMSTR Surveillance Reports and Data Presentations | Texas DSHS
• Texas Health Data - Emergency Medical Service (EMS) 911 Run Times
• Texas Health Data - EMS - Demographics
• Texas Health Data - Trauma - Demographics

Additional Information:

• EMSTR Data Reporting Guides and Rules | Texas DSHS
• Texas EMS & Trauma Registries - Frequently Asked Questions | Texas DSHS
• Home - NEMSIS
• Data Dictionaries & XSD - NEMSIS

Safe Riders Home Page

Safe Riders is a statewide child passenger safety program to prevent child deaths and reduce child injuries due to motor vehicle crashes.

Available Dashboards and Reports:

• Coming soon

Additional Information:

• Child Passenger Safety | Child Passenger Safety | CDC
• Take Action Toolkit to Prevent Heatstroke | Safe Kids Worldwide

Texas Overdose Data to Action (TODA) Home Page

TODA collects data from various entities to analyze comprehensive unintentional and undetermined fatal and non-fatal drug poisoning surveillance data and uses this data to drive prevention activities. 

TODA performs morbidity surveillance by reviewing data on unintentional and undetermined non-fatal drug poisonings from emergency departments (EDs) via syndromic surveillance system, inpatient and outpatient hospitalization data, and Emergency Medical Services and Trauma Registries (EMSTR).

In Texas, the hospitalization and discharge data are managed by the Texas Health Care Information Collection (THCIC) and the syndromic surveillance data is managed by the Texas Syndromic Surveillance (TxS2) program. EMSTR is a statewide surveillance system that collects data on all Texas EMS responses. This data includes 911 activations, transfers, and other non-emergent runs. From EMS data, TODA can gather data on EMS responses when a patient has a suspected drug involvement.

To perform mortality surveillance, TODA receives monthly death certificates due to unintentional and undermined drug poisonings from the DSHS Center for Health Statistics. TODA staff then request medical examiner (ME) or justice of the peace (JP) investigative reports, postmortem toxicology reports, and autopsies to gain additional insight into why a person died. Data analysts perform data abstraction and enter data on the characteristics and substances involved in unintentional and undetermined intent drug poisoning deaths into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS).

Available Dashboards and Reports:

• Texas Health Data - Opioid-Related Emergency Department Visits
• Texas Health Data - Drug-Related Deaths
• Texas Health Data - The Opioid Crisis by Public Health Region

Additional Information:

• Overdose Data to Action: Surveillance Strategies | Overdose Prevention | CDC

Texas Violent Death Reporting System (TVDRS) Home Page

The TVDRS program collects violent death data from many sources including death certificates, medical examiners, justices of the peace, and law enforcement agencies. TVDRS uses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System to enter data from these various sources to better understand why violent deaths occur. Violent deaths include suicides, homicides, accidental firearm deaths, and undetermined violent deaths.

Available Dashboards and Reports:

• Coming soon

Additional Information:

• National Violent Death Reporting System | NVDRS | CDC
• WISQARS National Violent Death Reporting System