The body count : using routine mortality surveillance data to drive violence prevention

Includes bibliographical references.This thesis describes the conceptualisation, development and implementation of a mortuary-based system for the routine collection of information about homicide. It traces the evolution of the system from its conceptualisation in 1994, through various iterations as a city-level research tool, to a national sentinel system pilot, as a multicity all-injury surveillance system, and finally its institutionalisation as a provincial injury mortality surveillance system in the Western Cape. In so doing, it demonstrates that the data arising from medico-legal post-mortem investigations described in this thesis were an important source of descriptive epidemiological information on homicide. The 37,037 homicide records described in the thesis were drawn from Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, for which the surveillance system maintained full coverage from 2001 to 2005. The aim was to apply more complex statistical analysis and modelling than had been applied previously

Gun control saves lives

Reducing firearm mortality by means of stricter gun control is one of the most important short- to medium-term measures to address the burden of violence in South Africa, while longer-term interventions and policy measures take effect

Evaluation of a Cape Town Safety Intervention as a Model for Good Practice: A Partnership between Researchers, Community and Implementing Agency

VPUU has a wealth of experience to share and is engaged with broader national and international policymakers and implementing agencies. Researchers are grappling with the difficulty of providing a rigorous project evaluation for these collaborations which could identify project elements that work with a view to their replication. This paper traces the evolution of an evidence-based approach to violence prevention in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) project in Cape Town uses such an approach, and relies on a 'whole-of-society' methodology as well. The project and the difficulty of its evaluation are discussed. A partnership between VPUU, researchers, the community and local government has revealed both opportunities and obstacles, which are the subjects of a case study described here

VIOLENT DEATHS IN SA: The 2003 National Injury Mortality Surveillance System

The latest data from the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System – the most detailed source on the ‘who, what, when, where and how’ of fatal injuries in South Africa – shows that homicide remains the most common cause of injury-related deaths. Homicide rates varied significantly between the four major urban centres covered, and firearms were a key contributor to the high homicide rates. Alcohol was confirmed as an important risk factor for murder, with the highest percentage of alcohol positive cases being recorded in Cape Town

Advancing alcohol research in low-income and middle-income countries: a global alcohol environment framework.

Alcohol-related harm has gained increased attention in high-income countries (HICs) in recent years which, alongside government regulation, has effected a reduction in alcohol consumption. The alcohol industry has turned its attention to low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) markets as a new source of growth and profit, prompting increased consumption in LMICS. Alcohol use in LMICs is also increasing. There is a need to understand particularly in LMICs the impact of industry strategy in shaping local contexts of alcohol use. We draw on conceptualisations from food systems research, and research on the commercial determinants of health, to develop a new approach for framing alcohol research and discuss implications for alcohol research, particularly in LMICs, focusing on South Africa as an illustrative example. We propose a conceptualisation of the 'alcohol environment' as the system of alcohol provision, acquisition and consumption-including, critically, industry advertising and marketing-along with the political, economic and regulatory context of the alcohol industry that mediates people's alcohol drinking patterns and behaviours. While each country and region is different in terms of its context of alcohol use, we contrast several broadly distinct features of alcohol environments in LMICs and HICs. Improving understanding of the full spectrum of influences on drinking behaviour, particularly in LMICs, is vital to inform the design of interventions and policies to facilitate healthier environments and reduce the harms associated with alcohol consumption. Our framework for undertaking alcohol research may be used to structure mixed methods empirical research examining the role of the alcohol environment particularly in LMICs

Where have all the gun deaths gone?

Background. The low number of firearm assaults and overall assault-related deaths in Statistics South Africa’s death notification reports is incongruous with other recently released data, including police crime statistics.Methods. We conducted a review of all gunshot injuries recorded in death notifications from 1997 to 2013, including all cases in which the underlying cause of death was ascribed to cause-specific codes in the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) that referred to a gunshot injury.Results. We identified 105 694 gunshot-related injury deaths over the 17-year period, an average of 6 217 per annum. The total annual number of gunshot injuries increased from 1997 to 2000, at which point firearm-related deaths peaked at 9 540 recorded cases. Thereafter there was a steadily decreasing trend (interrupted only in 2006 and 2008) until 2011, when 3 793 deaths were attributed to gunshot-related injuries as the underlying cause – a decrease of >60% from the peak in 2000.Conclusion. The cause-specific profile for gunshot injury deaths in this study indicated extensive misclassification, which explained the near-absence of these injuries among assault cases. However, the trend in gunshot-related injury deaths irrespective of intent provides further support for the hypothesis that stricter gun control, coinciding with the implementation of the Firearms Control Act of 2000, accounts for this decrease

SAIC final technical report : Survey Monkey

The report provides detailed answers to standard report questions for the period 2013-2016 for the project “Urban upgrading for violence prevention in South Africa: Does it work?” The diversity of context explored by this study allowed it to examine situations where very similar interventions resulted in quite different outcomes resulting from pre-existing community networks and entrenched patterns of local cohesion. Implications of the study are taken into account in terms of socio-economics, gender, policy, and engagement with other research and researchers

Violence and injury observatories: Reducing the burden of injury in high-risk communities

Background The meaning of an observatory has expanded recently from its origins in astronomy to that of specialised informational repositories and knowledge building centres housing cross-referenced databases with advanced analytic and research capacities. The purpose of the violence and injury observatories is directed toward preventing crime and violence at the local and regional level. Data around the burden of violence and injury for the African continent is limited and often not collected periodically thus limiting the implementation and evaluation of timely violence prevention interventions.MethodsAn observatory is primarily a tool to support the authorities in formulating effective responses to citizen safety and security issues. It is a centre dedicated to systematising information from different sources to produce periodic analyses or studies, to show the development of crime and violence in a given area. These surveillance systems primarily comprise two components: (1) Collection, analysis and interpretation of violence and injury data (2) Dissemination of findings to stakeholders within the safety and security cluster and the general public. There are several important data collection strategies which include health surveys, administrative data, mandatory reports and studies of special groups. Surveillance data initially may be analysed in terms of time, place, and person, by looking at time trends and geographic distribution and comparing age, sex, and population groups. Advanced data analysis methods for surveillance data include space-time clustering, time-series analysis, geospatial analysis, life tables, logistic regression, trend and small area analysis and methods for the forecast of epidemics based on surveillance dataConclusion  Violence and injury observatories seeks to collect comprehensive data on violence and injury data with the system serving as a platform for violence prevention intervention development and evaluation for their respective sites