Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #106815

Injury Surveillance Workgroup on Falls, Epidemiology and Response Division, Office of Injury Prevention, New Mexico Department of Heath, 1190 St. Francis Drive, P.O. Box 26110, Santa Fe, NM 87502-6110 and Barbara F. Chatterjee, Chair, Epidemiology and Response Division,Office of Injury Prevention, New Mexico Department of Health, P.O. Box 26110, 1190 S. St. Francis Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87502-6110, (505) 476-3563, barbara.chatterjee@doh.state.nm.us.

Surveillance of falls and fall injuries poses multiple challenges to the injury prevention community. These lie partly in the varied circumstances in which falls and fall injuries occur, dependence on already established coding systems, and inherent conflicts of collecting useful descriptions of fall circumstances and translating this text into encoded data. Further complications arise from recognizing that while some falls produce no injury, they may signal a significant medical issue or later lead to fall injury. Finally, different types of information may be needed for primary fall prevention than for the delivery of services to persons with a fall history or a fall injury.

To address and untangle these issues, the State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association (STIPDA) created its fourth Injury Surveillance Workgroup (ISW4) on falls, which is comprised of injury prevention practitioners, clinicians, epidemiologists an1d researchers representing state and national agencies and representative from four collaborating organizations: STIPDA, the National Association of Injury Control Research Centers (NAICRC), the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The ISW4 began meeting monthly in spring 2004.

This session will focus on the status of the ISW4's results, including consensus recommendations on 1)Working definitions for “falls” and “fall injuries”, 2)Surveillance issues for falls and use of coded data 3) Use of surveillance data in fall prevention, clinical settings and evaluation, and 4)Training needs to improve documentation of falls and fall injuries in patient medical records.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the proposed definitions for falls and fall injury
• Understand the complexity of falls identification
• Describe coding and training issues that impact on fall injury surveillance
• Identify the groups of codes recommended for monitoring fall injuries

Keywords: Injuries, Surveillance

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.