Health Care Costs of Violence in Pennsylvania

Violence captures our attention like few other human events. Accounts of murder, assault, and rape are a regular staple of newspaper and television reports; often the lead story. Violence is also a common element of mass entertainment via television
or the cinema. As one result, a common perception is that the issue of violence is a growing problem in the United States.
Statistics on the frequency of crime in the early 1990s found that this was true, particularly amongst juveniles. More recently, though, data indicate a decline in crime-related violence (1). Still, the impact of violence is sizeable. Over 2 million
Americans are victims of violent injury each year from crime (2), and the United States ranks first in the developed world in violent death rates (3). Many professionals now believe that violence is preventable, and is no longer an inevitable experience
. Several national objectives have been established in an effort to reduce the frequency and impact of violence.
The objective of this report is to systematically identify the relative frequency of violence in Pennsylvania, and to estimate the health care costs related to it. This information serves two purposes; (a) it identifies the impact of violence on the h
ealth care system in Pennsylvania, and (b) it provides information of relevance to the evaluation of violence prevention programs. An abstract of the findings of the report is listed below.
A copy of this
report
is available
here in PDF format. It requires the use of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download a copy of the Acrobat Reader for free at the button posted here.
Document:
Health Care Costs
Associated with Violence in Pennsylvania
References:
- Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Report Data, various years. See
www.fbi.gov
Understanding and Preventing Violence. National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1993.
- National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC. Rates of Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Death among Children-26 Industrialized Countries.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 46(5):101-105, 1997.
Other violence report links:
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crime in the United States, 1998. Uniform Crime Reports. In http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/98cius.htm
FONT>, Washington, DC 1999.
Rennison CM. Criminal Victimization 1998, Changes 1997-98 with trends 1993-98. Bureau of Justice Statistics Research Report NCJ 176353, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, In http://
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cv98.htm, July 1999.
Pennsylvania Commission on Crime & Delinquency. United States vs. Pennsylvania Violent Crime Analysis 1982-1998. In http://www.state.
pa.us/PA.Exec/PCCD/stats/factsheets/uspaviol.pdf, October 1999.
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Facts About Violence Among Youth and Violence in Schools. In http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/schoolvi.htm, Ja
nuary 2000
Pennsylvania State Police. 1998 Uniform Crime Report Highlights. In http://www.state.pa.us/PA_Exec/State_Police/ucr/1998highlights.htm, January 2000.
Tjaden P, Thoennes N. Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. DOJ Pub. No. NCJ-172837, In http://w
ww.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/172837.htm, November 1998.
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. Statistics. In http://www.pcar.org/stats.html, July 1999.
Sedlak A, Broadhurst D. Full report of the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect. US Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. In http://www.calib.com/nccanch/data/nis3.txt, 1996.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Suicide in the United States. http://
www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/suifacts.htm.
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Fatal firearm injuries in the United States, 1962-1994. Executive Summary. Violence Surveillance Summary Series No. 3. http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/whatsnew/firarmsu.htm. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. June 2, 1998.
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Firearm Injuries and Fatalities. http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheet
s/fafacts.htm. April 27, 1998.
For further information about the report, please contact Thomas Songer at tjs+@pitt.edu
Thomas Songer, PhD, Dept. of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA