Integrating Emergency Department Data with Law Enforcement, Emergency Medical Service and Community Data to Reduce Violence

The Cardiff Model is a unique violence surveillance system and intervention that involves data sharing and violence prevention planning between law enforcement and the medical field. Anonymized data on assaults from emergency and police departments (EDs; PDs) are combined to detail assault incidents and "hotspots. Data are discussed by a multidisciplinary consortium, which develops and implements a data-informed violence prevention action plan that includes behavioral, environmental, and policy changes to impact violence. Model actions led to decreases in injurious assaults and this model is now statutory in the United Kingdom. The Cardiff Model has never been translated to the U.S. and requires an investigation within our health care system and in different geographical and population contexts. This study will investigate the feasibility of essential Cardiff Model Components in order to refine study procedures and situate this community to request further funds for full model implementation. The goals of this feasibility study are to 1) begin to translate the model to an urban U.S. city, 2) expand upon the model to include data from Emergency Medical Services (EMS), 3) measure the benefits of combining data on police involvement, ED visits, and EMS calls for estimates of community assault rates, 4) recruit stakeholders who are interested in participating in the model's community consortium intervention, and 5) to describe the steps for model adoption into other communities. A Primary Mentor and Mentoring Advisory Committee will facilitate the PI's completion of study objectives and mentoring plan.
We propose to collect a number of feasibility measures from ED and study staff to evaluate the feasibility of translating included model components. Geospatial and statistical analyses will investigate the added benefit of the combined ED, PD and EMS data. If model feasibility is supported, future studies will expand data collection to more hospitals and implement the model's community-based consortium, which includes partnerships between researchers, law enforcement and other community stakeholders to inform violence prevention planning and action items.
Study results will be broadly disseminated to stakeholders, practitioners and research communities. Data will be archived for replication of study results. If deemed feasible, this model can provide law enforcement additional data resources, public health partners, and an outlet to better monitor impacts of policing strategies over time. Approaching violence as a public health issue may lead to an array of changes in the built environment, staffing and patrol patterns, policies, resource allocation and overall burden of violence. ca/ncf