Fatal and nonfatal injury hospitalizations are included on this dashboard. Data include all Virginia-licensed hospitals. Data from federal or military hospitals, like Veterans Affairs Medical Centers, are not included.
Data are of Virginia residents hospitalized in Virginia. Data by Virginia health district is where the person lived at the time of hospitalization. It is not based on the health district where the person was hospitalized.
Counts are the number of hospitalizations. This means that a patient could have stayed in the hospital more than once for the same injury. These would count as two separate hospitalizations.
Dashboard Navigation
Use the 'Select Year' and 'Select specific injury type' controls to filter changes in the map. Hover over the map to view the yearly trend.
Injury Hospitalization Rate
Data Source: Virginia Health Information
Injury Hospitalization Rates by Mechanism (Cause) or Intent
Data Source: Virginia Health Information
Injury Hospitalization Rates by Mechanism (Cause) or Intent Table
Data Source: Virginia Health Information
About the Data
Case Definitions: Case definitions come from the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. The only difference is that VDH did include fatal hospitalizations for the dashboard. VDH made this decision to show all injury hospitalizations that impact Virginians.
Intent: Intent is how the injury happened. There are five types of intent:
- Unintentional means it did not happen on purpose.
- Self-harm and assault mean that the injury happened on purpose. Self-harm is that the injury happened oneself on purpose. Assault means that a person hurt another person on purpose.
- Legal intervention or war means that the injury happened during war or a police interaction.
- Undetermined means there is not a known intent.
Firearm-related and nondrug poisoning hospitalizations include all intent types.
The following injury hospitalizations on the dashboard are unintentional intent only:
- Falls,
- Fires,
- Bites and stings,
- Drowning,
- All motor vehicle traffic (MVT),
- MVT – motorcyclist,
- MVT – occupant,
- MVT – pedestrian, and
- MVT– pedalcyclist.
The intent for self-harm hospitalizations is self-harm. The intent for assault hospitalizations is assault.
Mechanism: Mechanism means the cause, or method, of the injury. For example, a person hurt their knee by falling. The mechanism for the injury would be a “fall.”
Measures: Inpatient hospital discharge counts and rates per 100,000 population. Population estimates to calculate rates come from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Geography: The patient’s residential zip code determines the health district.
Data Source: Hospitalization data are from Virginia Health Information. Data are maintained and analyzed by VDH for public health purposes. Data for this dashboard are analyzed by the VDH Office of Family Health Services, Division of Population Health Data, Injury and Violence Epidemiology Team. Data visualized by the VDH Center for Public Health Informatics.
Contact: population.health@vdh.virginia.gov