Timely provisional surveillance of suicides using data from CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System: a cross-sectional analysis of data from 50 US states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, January–June 2024
Katherine A Fowler, Marissa L Zwald, Craig K Bryant, Janet M Blair, Kristin HollandBackground
To improve timeliness of detailed data on suicides and violent deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) Rapid Reporting Feature (RRF) in 2024 to provide insights earlier than finalised NVDRS data for state/jurisdictional VDRS programmes. This study is the first to use data from the RRF, describing provisional suicide data by selected characteristics.
Methods
Provisional suicide data from CDC’s NVDRS RRF meeting data completeness thresholds from 1 January to 30 June 2024 were examined by selected demographic and incident characteristics.
Results
NVDRS captured 21 281 suicide deaths from 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico during the study period. Most incidents involved a single suicide; approximately 80% of suicide decedents were males and over 84% were white. Over 75% of suicide deaths meeting data quality thresholds occurred in houses/apartments. Firearms were the leading injury method overall (58.9%), and for males (64.0%) and females (38.5%). Among suicide deaths with known circumstances, leading circumstances were related to known current diagnosed mental health problems (51.9%), alcohol or other substance use (33.5%), intimate partner problems (23.1%) and contributing physical health problems (21.3%). Almost 65% of decedents had a recent/upcoming crisis. Over one-third of decedents had a history of suicidal thoughts/plans; 28.2% left a suicide note.
Discussion and conclusions
Although findings are provisional, the NVDRS RRF improves the timeliness of suicide surveillance data by up to a year, providing earlier insights into recent patterns and circumstances of suicide deaths, which can inform timelier suicide prevention and response efforts.