Data Sources for Improving Estimates of the Global Burden of Injuries: Call for Contributors

We have recently embarked on a collaborative project to improve estimates of the global burden of injuries. This commentary invites individuals and organizations to contribute to building this global public good by providing the project access to relevant results from local injury data sources. Reliable estimates of the incidence and burden of injuries are essential inputs for prioritizing prevention strategies. While population-based injury surveillance systems are obviously the best source for such information, it is also widely recognized that such infrastructure is unlikely to be established in most of the world for several decades. Thus, there is an urgent need for the global injury community to collaborate to build the methods and tools that can be used to derive reasonable estimates from a wide range of existing sources, including hospital records, police reports, health surveys, and death registers, among many others. On July 14, 2007, the core team of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project issued an open call for expert participation to ensure that GBD 2005 estimates incorporate the broadest possible knowledge of individual diseases and risk factors [1]. The original GBD study [2] has proven immensely influential in shaping global health priorities, and many in the injury community recognize the need and potential of replicating such work with a focus on injury metrics. As a result, over 160 injury researchers from across the globe volunteered to participate in the GBD Injury Expert Group. The mandate of the group is to further develop the theoretical framework for estimating the burden Data Sources for Improving Estimates of the Global Burden of Injuries: Call for Contributors