Intended for healthcare professionals

CCBYNC Open access
Research

Effectiveness of anonymised information sharing and use in health service, police, and local government partnership for preventing violence related injury: experimental study and time series analysis

BMJ 2011; 342 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d3313 (Published 16 June 2011) Cite this as: BMJ 2011;342:d3313
  1. Curtis Florence, senior health economist1,
  2. Jonathan Shepherd, professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery and research group director2,
  3. Iain Brennan, lecturer3,
  4. Thomas Simon, associate director for science1
  1. 1Division of Violence Prevention, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
  2. 2Violence and Society Research Group, School of Dentistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4XY, UK
  3. 3Department of Social Sciences, University of Hull, Hull
  1. Correspondence to: J P Shepherd shepherdjp{at}cardiff.ac.uk
  • Accepted 15 April 2011

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of anonymised information sharing to prevent injury related to violence.

Design Experimental study and time series analysis of a prototype community partnership between the health service, police, and local government partners designed to prevent violence.

Setting Cardiff, Wales, and 14 comparison cities designated “most similar” by the Home Office in England and Wales.

Intervention After a 33 month development period, anonymised data relevant to violence prevention (precise violence location, time, days, and weapons) from patients attending emergency departments in Cardiff and reporting injury from violence were shared over 51 months with police and local authority partners and used to target resources for violence prevention.

Main outcome measures Health service records of hospital admissions related to violence and police records of woundings and less serious assaults in Cardiff and other cities after adjustment for potential confounders.

Results Information sharing and use were associated with a substantial and significant reduction in hospital admissions related to violence. In the intervention city (Cardiff) rates fell from seven to five a month per 100 000 population compared with an increase from five to eight in comparison cities (adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.58, 95% confidence interval 0.49 to 0.69). Average rate of woundings recorded by the police changed from 54 to 82 a month per 100 000 population in Cardiff compared with an increase from 54 to 114 in comparison cities (adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.68, 0.61 to 0.75). There was a significant increase in less serious assaults recorded by the police, from 15 to 20 a month per 100 000 population in Cardiff compared with a decrease from 42 to 33 in comparison cities (adjusted incidence rate ratio 1.38, 1.13 to 1.70).

Conclusion An information sharing partnership between health services, police, and local government in Cardiff, Wales, altered policing and other strategies to prevent violence based on information collected from patients treated in emergency departments after injury sustained in violence. This intervention led to a significant reduction in violent injury and was associated with an increase in police recording of minor assaults in Cardiff compared with similar cities in England and Wales where this intervention was not implemented.

Footnotes

  • We thank Robert Newcombe (professor of medical statistics, Cardiff University), Fred Rivara (professor of epidemiology, Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Centre, University of Washington), and Linda Dahlberg (Centers for Disease Control) for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. We also thank Paul Taylor at the Home Office for collation of recorded crime data. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Contributors: CF, JS, IB, and TS designed the analyses and wrote the manuscript. CF conducted the statistical analyses. IB collated the data and conducted the data review. JS conceived the hypothesis and initiated the programme, data sharing arrangements, and the prototype community partnership (which he convened and chaired throughout the period of the study). All authors saw and approved the final version of the manuscript. JS is guarantor.

  • Funding: The development of the prototype partnership was funded in part by a grant from the Home Office targeted policing fund. The study was funded in part by the Wales Office for Research and Development in Health and Social Care (WORD), grant No R/98/037.

  • Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

  • Ethical approval: Not required.

  • Data sharing: No additional data available.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.

View Full Text