Proposed Data Collection Submitted for Public Comment and Recommendations

AGENCY:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

ACTION:

Notice with comment period.

SUMMARY:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as part of its continuing efforts to reduce public burden and maximize the utility of government information, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. This notice invites comment on The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) to continue collecting state-based surveillance data on violent deaths that will provide more detailed and timely information.

DATES:

Written comments must be received on or before November 7, 2016.

ADDRESSES:

You may submit comments, identified by Docket No. CDC-2016-0087 by any of the following methods:

Federal eRulemaking Portal: Regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.

Mail: Leroy A. Richardson, Information Collection Review Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, NE., MS-D74, Atlanta, Georgia 30329.

Instructions: All submissions received must include the agency name and Docket Number. All relevant comments received will be posted without change to Regulations.gov, including any personal information provided. For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to Regulations.gov.

Please note: All public comment should be submitted through the Federal eRulemaking portal (Regulations.gov) or by U.S. mail to the address listed above.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

To request more information on the proposed project or to obtain a copy of the information collection plan and instruments, contact the Information Collection Review Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, NE., MS-D74, Atlanta, Georgia 30329; phone: 404-639-7570; Email: omb@cdc.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520), Federal agencies must obtain approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for each collection of information they conduct or sponsor. In addition, the PRA also requires Federal agencies to provide a 60-day notice in the Federal Register concerning each proposed collection of information, including each new proposed collection, each proposed extension of existing collection of information, and each reinstatement of previously approved information collection before submitting the collection to OMB for approval. To comply with this requirement, we are publishing this notice of a proposed data collection as described below.

Comments are invited on: (a) Whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the information shall have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of information; (c) ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; (d) ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents, including through the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology; and (e) estimates of capital or start-up costs and costs of operation, maintenance, and purchase of services to provide information. Burden means the total time, effort, or financial resources expended by persons to generate, maintain, retain, disclose or provide information to or for a Federal agency. This includes the time needed to review instructions; to develop, acquire, install and utilize technology and systems for the purpose of collecting, validating and verifying information, processing and maintaining information, and disclosing and providing information; to train personnel and to be able to respond to a collection of information, to search data sources, to complete and review the collection of information; and to transmit or otherwise disclose the information.

Proposed Project

The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), (OMB Control No. 0920-0607, Expiration 10/31/2017)—Revision—National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Background and Brief Description

Violence is an important public health problem. In the United States, suicide and homicide are the second and third leading causes of death, respectively, in the 1-34 year old age group. Unfortunately, public health agencies do not know much more about the problem than the numbers and the sex, race, and age of the victims, or information obtainable from the standard death certificate. Death certificates, however, carry no information about key facts necessary for prevention such as the relationship of the victim and suspect and the circumstances of the deaths. Furthermore, death certificates are typically available 20 months after the completion of a single calendar year. Official publications of national violent death rates, e.g. those in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, rarely use data that is less than two years old.

Local and Federal criminal justice agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provide slightly more information about homicides, but they do not routinely collect standardized data about suicides, which are in fact much more common than homicides. The FBI's Supplemental Homicide Report (SHRs) does collect basic information about the victim-suspect relationship and circumstances related to the homicide. SHRs, do not link violent deaths that are part of one incident such as homicide-suicides. It also is a voluntary system in which some 10-20 percent of police departments nationwide do not participate. The FBI's National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) provides slightly more information than SHRs, but it covers less of the country than SHRs. NIBRS also only provides data regarding homicides. Also, the Bureau of Justice Statistics Reports do not use data that is less than two years old.

CDC requests OMB approval in order to revise its state-based surveillance system for violent deaths that will provide more detailed and timely information. The surveillance system captures case record information held by medical examiners/coroners, vital statistics (i.e., death certificates), and law enforcement. Data is collected by each state in the system and entered into a web system administered by CDC. Information is collected from these records about the characteristics of the victims and suspects, the circumstances of the deaths, and the weapons involved. States use standardized data elements and software designed by CDC. Ultimately, this information will guide states in designing, targeting, and evaluating programs that reduce multiple forms of violence. Neither victim's families nor suspects are contacted to collect this information; it all comes from existing records and is collected by state health department staff or their subcontractors. The number of hours per death required for the public agencies working with NVDRS states to retrieve and then refile their records is estimated to be 0.5 hours per death. Moving forward, we will no longer include state abstractors' time spent abstracting data in our estimates of public burden for NVDRS because state abstractors are funded by CDC to do this work. This significantly reduces the estimated public burden associated with NVDRS.

The president has submitted plans to fund the expansion of the state-based surveillance system to collect information in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. This revision will allow 10 new state health departments, and 7 territorial governments to be added to the currently funded 39 state health departments (Maine and Vermont are funded as one entity), the health department of the District of Columbia, and 1 territorial government, resulting in a total of 59 states and territories to be included in the state-based surveillance system. Violent deaths include all homicides, suicides, legal interventions, deaths from undetermined causes, and unintentional firearm deaths. The average state will experience approximately 1,000 such deaths each year.

There are no costs to respondents other than their time.