Utah Violent Death Reporting System

Violent deaths in Utah represent a significant public health concern. In direct response to this concern, Utah became one of 17 states participating in the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), in 2004. The Utah Department of Health, Violence and Injury Prevention Program was awarded funding for the system by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (CDC/NCIPC).

The Utah Violent Death Reporting System (UT-VDRS) is an incident based system that collects detailed information from death certificates, medical examiner records, police reports, crime lab records and supplemental homicide reports on all violent deaths in Utah. Homicides, Suicides, deaths of undetermined intent, unintentional firearm-related deaths and deaths due to legal intervention are all considered violent deaths for the purpose of the data collection. A legal intervention includes fatal injuries inflicted by the police or other law-enforcing agents. Abstracted data are entered into a standardized database system. De-identified data is then “pushed” daily to the national database which is maintained and supported by the CDC.Utah began collecting data in 2005.