Violent Death Reporting System

• Homicide
• Suicide
• Accidental firearm related
• Legal intervention (police-related shootings)
• Acts of terrorism
• Undetermined and pending

The Bureau of Vital Statistics provides information from their death certificate database using the following ICD-10 codes for external causes of morbidity and mortality:

• X60-X99
• Y00-Y09
• Y10-Y34
• Y35-Y35.4
• Y35.6-Y35.7
• W32-W34
• U01
• U03
• And additional ICD10 codes for deaths >1 year after injury (Y87.0-Y87.2, Y89-Y89.9, Y86 (if firearm related), and U02

Information from source documents is collected and entered into the AKVDRS database. This database helps program staff analyze over 700 details about each incident, giving data providers, users, and advisory members a clear picture of violent deaths in Alaska. AKVDRS data can help identify trends and patterns that may concern law enforcement, public health, and others.

The data is shared through annual statewide reports on violent deaths in Alaska, online statistics, and public presentations that compare violent deaths in Alaska to the rest of the country.

• AKVDRS partnerships
• State Medical Examiner Office
• Health Analytics and Vital Records
• Department of Public Safety
• Alaska Bureau of Investigation
• Law enforcement agencies Alaska State Troopers, police departments, and village public safety officers
• Additional data, when available is collected from EMS records, hospital records, news media, and other relevant documents

Alaska law enforcement agencies often face unique cultural, environmental, geographical and jurisdictional issues when conducting investigations and archiving of case files. These issues include:

• Vast, undeveloped expanses with 656,425 square miles of land, 6,640 miles of coastline, and population density of ~1.0 person per sq. mile
• Rough terrain and limited transportation infrastructure (water, air, land) that complicate discovery, recovery, and investigation of deaths
• Records for each death must be located depending upon state and tribal authority, requested, and then abstracted in a timely manner

The AKVDRS program understands the value of the data that are entrusted to it and has developed security protocols to ensure the data are maintained in a secure and proprietary manner. Only fully adjudicated records are entered into the database thereby ensuring no legal cases pending before the courts are compromised.

Transmitted data for inclusion into the NVDRS database are stripped of all personal identifiers before transmission.

Analysis of the data is done with aggregation and statistical tools to ensure the data are accurate and representative of Alaska populations, yet in a manner that no one individual or incident is identifiable to the data users.

• The AKVDRS is funded under a Cooperative Grant Agreement with CDC to maintain and improve the state-based violent death reporting system.
• The AKVDRS collects information related to victim(s) and suspect(s) including circumstances and environmental factors such as domestic violence, intimate partner violence, abuse/neglect, and drug overdose.
• The AKVDRS has published several summary bulletins and reports that includes information on child fatalities (0-17 years of age) and accidental firearm fatalities.
  The AKVDRS staff have participated in the development of several articles and publications including MMWR articles and other public health publications detailing violent death across the NVDRS states.
• The AKVDRS staff have participated in and presented AKVDRS data at several local, national, and international injury prevention conferences.
• The AKVDRS in conjunction with the advisory group members and other data users are exploring the use of additional data fields to collect and analyze state specific data elements.

For questions about the National Violent Death Reporting System, please visit the CDC National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS).