Advisory board convenes to discuss NC Violent Death Reporting System

The advisory board for the North Carolina Violent Death Reporting System (NC-VDRS) convened on Friday, November 16 at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The meeting was organized and sponsored by the North Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) in collaboration with the Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC). During the meeting, Scott Proescholdbell and Dana Dandeneau from DPH provided a brief programmatic update on recent developments with the NC-VDRS. The remainder of the meeting was dedicated to discussing potential strategies to increase the visibility and accessibility of NC-VDRS data.

Julie Kafka, a graduate research assistant at the IPRC and doctoral student in Health Behavior at Gillings School of Global Public Health, presented on the data user support tools that she developed in collaboration with DPH staff over the summer. The suite of data user support tools includes a list of frequently asked questions, a description of recent projects that have used NC-VDRS data, a set of example attachments for a Data Use Agreement (DUA), and a short codebook of commonly requested variables.

Dr. Rebecca Macy, Scott Proescholdbell, and Dr. Beth Moracco (left to right)

At the end of the meeting, two advisory board members were awarded certificates of appreciation for their work as champions of NC-VDRS: Beth Moracco, IPRC associate director, and Rebecca Macy, core IPRC faculty member.