Public Health Surveillance  

The 1996 report to Congress¹ and the 1998 CDC-sponsored workgroup on monitoring violence against women² stated that ongoing, systematic collection of data from multiple, existing sources is necessary to provide: 

v      An estimate of the magnitude of the problem

v      A better understanding of the seriousness of IPV-related injuries

v      Identification of geographic areas and groups at greatest risk

v      Insights into barriers to using exiting IPV services

v      Monitor changes over time in the amount of IPV, affected subgroups, use of services, etc.

Public health surveillance is the continuous process of collection, analysis and interpretation of information. Most people are familiar with public health surveillance of communicable disease in which cases are reported by private physicians, hospitals and laboratories to the local health department, who then takes action to prevent the further spread of the disease.

The IPVS project aims to build a similar system of surveillance for IPV, using multiple sources of data to provide timely, relevant and useful information for those responsible for the investigation, control and prevention of intimate partner violence.

Building a Public Health Surveillance System: The intention of the project is to build a multi-source data system over the course of the 5 year funding period. While we have begun with only a few data sources and the data is of variable quality, our intention is to continue to incorporate data from additional sources and work towards improved quality in existing data sets. We recognize that it will take several years to develop the surveillance system to the point where analysis of data can provide truly useful results.