Injury data and surveillance: What are we looking for? 

Injuries are a leading cause of hospitalization, disability, and death in Canada. In 2018, injuries were associated with over 17,000 deaths, 61,000 disabilities, 230,000 hospitalizations, and 4.6 million emergency department visits, and costed the Canadian economy $29.4 billion, equivalent to $80 million every day. The prevention and minimization of injuries thus presents opportunities to incur cost savings and allocate resources elsewhere in healthcare and public health, and to ultimately reduce the burden of injuries on people’s lives.

The monitoring of unintentional and intentional injuries and targeting interventions to prevent them through public health surveillance is a critical step in reducing the burden of injury. Injury surveillance improves our understanding of the various types of injuries (e.g., falls, poisoning, suicide), their underlying causes and relationships to the social determinants of health, and their trends among population groups.