The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has launched a new dashboard detailing information about all violent deaths and firearm-related injuries in the state.
According to IDPH, the new dashboard is presented in two parts: Illinois Firearm Injury Rates and Illinois Violent Deaths. The department said it is intended to provide detailed information at the county level about these incidents, including the types of incidents, weapon type, and where victims reside, broken down by county. The goal of the dashboard is to inform data-driven prevention and intervention efforts to reduce violent deaths and firearm injuries in Illinois.
“Firearm violence is a public health crisis that requires public health solutions,” said IDPH Director Dr. Sameer Vohra. “Modernizing how we gather and use data is critical to finding holistic solutions that address firearm violence in a comprehensive way. IDPH is proud to partner with the Joyce Foundation and Understory to build this leading-edge dashboard that gathers comprehensive data about both violent deaths and firearm-related injuries. We look forward to partnering with our statewide and local leaders to use this dashboard to create data-driven policies and plans that make our communities safer and healthier.”
The dashboard’s data is sourced from two public health surveillance systems funded by the CDC. The violent death and circumstances data are contributed by the Illinois Violent Death Reporting System (IVDRS), which is operated by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. IDPH syndromic surveillance provides the emergency department (ED) visit data with data quality support funded, in part, by CDC’s Advancing Violence Epidemiology in Real-Time grant.
IVDRS contributes data on violent deaths in Illinois going back to 2015 and includes data on victim and suspect demographics, circumstances leading up to and including the fatal injury, and toxicology and autopsy results. Syndromic surveillance contributes data from hospital ED visits and includes non-fatal firearm injury rates per 100,000 ED visits. It also breaks down aggregated data by age-range, sex, race/ethnicity, and county.
“The launch of this dashboard represents a significant step forward in Illinois’ mission to reduce and eliminate firearm violence,” said Quiwana Bell, Illinois Department of Human Services Assistant Secretary Designate, Office of Firearm Violence Prevention. “Access to reliable data is a powerful tool for directing resources to where they can have the greatest impact, empowering communities, policymakers, and organizations to take decisive, life-saving action.”
The dashboard was funded through support from The Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based private, nonpartisan philanthropic organization that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility in Illinois and other states in the Great Lakes Region. It was designed by Understory Consulting, a research and policy consulting firm that works on issues related to human rights, social justice and equity.
“We’re excited to support this groundbreaking data dashboard and the innovative approach being taken by the Illinois Department of Health to keep our communities informed with such important and timely information,” said Tim Daly, director of The Joyce Foundation’s Gun Violence Prevention and Justice Reform program. “This tool will provide us with more accurate data to better understand what is happening in communities and allow us to make more informed policy and practice decisions to prevent gun violence.”
