The Injury Data Review

The Injury Data Review (April 2000 – December 2001) aimed to address problems with the collection of and access to injury information. Eight government agencies collect injury information, however no agency collects information on all injuries. Therefore, we do not know for certain how many people are injured each year.

The Injury Data Review consisted of the following sub-projects:

• Problem definition: establishing what the problems are with the existing information
• Framework, indicators, and data set development: identifying a structure (framework) that represents the different types of injury information and shows the relationship between them; deciding what specific questions about injury need to be answered, and what information is required to answer them (indicators); and deciding what individual data items need to be collected (data set)
• Gap analysis: identifying which agencies already collect the data items, and to what standard
• Selection of model for information management: developing a model for the long-term management and reporting of injury information, including accountability arrangements
• Cost benefit analysis of proposed model for information management: identifying the estimated costs and benefits of the proposed model

The Review concluded that the best way to address the current problems with injury information is for an “Injury Information Manager” to bring together injury data from the eight agencies that already collect it, and integrate it into a complete data set. In June 2002, the Prime Minister appointed Statistics New Zealand as the Injury Information Manager.

Within the next three years, Statistics New Zealand plans to implement an injury information dissemination programme and establish the infrastructure needed to support this programme. Within the next five years, Statistics New Zealand will establish public reporting of injury statistics and provide access to injury information for range of users for a range of uses.

The Report of the Injury Data Review was released on the 31 October 2002.