Re: Violence in England and Wales: does media reporting match the data?
Dear Editor,
Humphreys et al (2019) set out a convincing case for whether trends in violence are moving in one direction or another and the rationale for using multiple sources of data when understanding trends in violence. However, while the authors state that “it is important to consider all the data before labelling the problem a national emergency”, they, ironically, do not even mention another source of information that is largely ignored when considering violence - ambulance call-out data.
Previous research, my own included (Boyle et al., 2015; Sutherland et al., 2017), has shown that ambulance call-outs for violence are a unique source of information that captures events not recorded in police crime data, or at different times of the day, and typically at a much higher volume than Emergency Department or hospital admissions data (see Figures 6, 7 & 12 in Sutherland et al., 2017: 37-40). As such, ambulance data may offer avenues to undertake preventative work if it captures events that would otherwise be missed in police or ED data. More importantly, if we are to build a complete picture of violence, we need to use all the sources available to us. I would strongly urge the authors to include ambulance data in any future work on this topic and would be happy to contribute.
Dr. Alex Sutherland
Boyle, A., Taylor, A., Giacomantonio, C. and Sutherland, A. ‘Using ambulance data to reduce community violence: critical literature review’, European Journal of Emergency Medicine, 23(4):248-252. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26629765
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Re: Violence in England and Wales: does media reporting match the data?
Dear Editor,
Humphreys et al (2019) set out a convincing case for whether trends in violence are moving in one direction or another and the rationale for using multiple sources of data when understanding trends in violence. However, while the authors state that “it is important to consider all the data before labelling the problem a national emergency”, they, ironically, do not even mention another source of information that is largely ignored when considering violence - ambulance call-out data.
Previous research, my own included (Boyle et al., 2015; Sutherland et al., 2017), has shown that ambulance call-outs for violence are a unique source of information that captures events not recorded in police crime data, or at different times of the day, and typically at a much higher volume than Emergency Department or hospital admissions data (see Figures 6, 7 & 12 in Sutherland et al., 2017: 37-40). As such, ambulance data may offer avenues to undertake preventative work if it captures events that would otherwise be missed in police or ED data. More importantly, if we are to build a complete picture of violence, we need to use all the sources available to us. I would strongly urge the authors to include ambulance data in any future work on this topic and would be happy to contribute.
Dr. Alex Sutherland
Boyle, A., Taylor, A., Giacomantonio, C. and Sutherland, A. ‘Using ambulance data to reduce community violence: critical literature review’, European Journal of Emergency Medicine, 23(4):248-252. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26629765
Sutherland, A., Strang, L., Stepanek, M., Giacomantonio, C. and Boyle, A. (2017) Using ambulance data for violence prevention: technical report. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/ambulance-data-injury-...
Competing interests: No competing interests