Data & Surveillance

Understanding trends and patterns is an important first step in reducing the burden of injury.

Injury surveillance is the ongoing collection, analysis, interpretation, and timely dissemination of injury data.
The BCIRPU monitors information on injuries, including: how injuries happen, the type of injuries, who gets injured, and why and when they happen. BCIRPU researchers study these data and how individuals, workplaces, governments, health authorities, and other stakeholders can prevent these injuries from happening. Information is used to inform injury prevention initiatives.

Injury Data 101

We have created a series of factsheets on injury data.

what is an injury?

Where do we get injury data?

How do we describe the burden of an injury?

How do we monitor injury?

How do we present the burden of injury?

The iDOT© is an easy-to-use, menu-driven system that makes injury data available to injury prevention practitioners and professionals, as well as the public. It is an effective and efficient way for users to access injury data.

Gain insight into injury-related deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits by exploring our data visualizations for an overview of injury trends and patterns in BC.

The Cost of Injury is an interactive tool created to help people understand the human and economic cost of preventable injuries. Interactive charts and graphs help illustrate the human cost of injury, including deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits, as well as the economic costs of injury on the health care system and society. The tool provides costs by BC Health Authority.

How do we use data?

Material Wealth, Social Connectedness, and Injury (PDF)Potential Years of Life Lost and Preventable Years of Life Lost: A Primer (PDF)Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs): A Primer (PDF)

Quick Charts

  • Table: Leading Causes of Injury-Related Hospitalizations, 2019-20 (PDF)
  • Table: Leading Causes of Injury-Related Hospitalizations, 2021-22 (PDF)
  • Table: Leading Causes of Hospitalizations, 2022-23 (PDF)

Injury Indicators

An injury indicator is a summary measure that reflects variations in trends and injuries.

Child and Youth Serious Injury Indicator Tool

A serious paediatric injury indicator, age standardized hospitalization rate, was developed to be used for evaluation of trends in severe pediatric trauma among those aged 0 to 19 years. This indicator will help identify populations at risk.

The methods and results of the development process have been published in Injury Prevention.

Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP)

BCIRPU operates the BC Children’s Hospital component of the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP), an emergency department level injury surveillance system funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and in use in 11 pediatric and 9 general hospitals across Canada. The program continues to amass extensive data and information on child and youth injury, which is used to inform injury prevention policy and programs. Dr. Shelina Babul is the Director of the CHIRPP program at BC Children’s Hospital.