Injury is the leading cause of death in the U.S. until the age of 45 years... Heading link

  • 100,000+ Drug related deaths occurred last year in the U.S. The rise in deaths has been driven primarily by exposures to fentanyl.

  • Neglect is the most common form of elder mistreatment, and the outcomes of neglect can be as pernicious as physical abuse.

  • 42,339 Persons were killed last year on U.S. roads. Most deaths are caused by higher speed limits and alcohol.

Our research team specializes in analyses of large population based datasets, longitudinal cohorts, surveillance systems, data linkage and multi-center projects. A key goal of our research is identify common risk factors of injury across realms that are traditionally evaluated separately: the environment, home/community and workplace. As an example, individuals experiencing violence at home or in their communities will have their work lives impacted, as will those discriminated against and working in unsafe environments will have their families and communities adversely affected. The main objective of the research is to inform injury safety policy to improve individual lives across all domains.

Our research focuses on several key areas:

  • Developing and implementing real-time surveillance systems on a wide array of issues including general injuries, opioid overdoses, biochemical hazards in water systems, carbon monoxide poisoning, ionizing radiation, the recent COVID 19 outbreak, pesticide exposures, and elevated adult blood lead.
  • Traffic safety with a focus on the role of speed on injury risk and severity
  • Ethnic, age and gender disparities in injury burden
  • Elder mistreatment – the focus of our research has been on risk factors for physical abuse, characteristics and risk factors among perpetrators of mistreatment, clinical signs of neglect, medical neglect, and improving screening of elder mistreatment in the acute hospital settings.
  • Substance use disorders – the main focus has been on adverse health outcomes from illicit drug use including opioids, stimulants and other substances.
  • Civilian injuries caused during contact with law enforcement – Our Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project aims to build a comprehensive surveillance system to better characterize the magnitude of civilian and law enforcement injuries that occur each year in the U.S. and to guide policy reform that addresses police use of force tactics and strategies to build community trust in the police.
  • Self-harm – we have conducted several research projects to determine temporal risk factors for self-harm, the role of social support in mitigating risk for suicide ideation, and unrecognized high risk subgroups.

All injuries are preventable. Heading link

Motor vehicle crash

All injuries are preventable. Despite this fact, injury remains the leading cause of death and hospitalizations for people up to 45 years of age and is the leading cause of years of lost life and lost productivity. Injuries can result in substantial disabilities and impairments that affect an individuals quality of life.

See our community injury prevention research