Global Burden of Disease disability weights for the US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System - All Injury Program.

Abstract

Background: Measuring the impact of non-fatal injuries and violence is essential for informed public health policy-making and communications. This study aimed to generate new health-related quality of life data for a prominent US non-fatal injury surveillance source using disability weights derived from general population survey estimates.

Methods: Disability weights reflecting severity as measured on a 0 (no disability) to 1 (death) scale, for 47 natures of injury from the Global Burden of Diseases, Risk Factors and Injuries Study (GBD) were mapped to 492 injury types in the US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System - All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP). The matching of GBD natures of injury to NEISS-AIP injury types was based on the underlying definitions for each injury diagnosis.

Results: The average disability value weighted by incidence for all NEISS-AIP types was 0.073 (95% uncertainty interval: 0.050-0.097), and the range by injured body part and diagnosis was 0.006-0.408. Injuries that impacted large or critical body parts (lower trunk, upper trunk, head and neck) had the highest disability weights. Internal injuries, crushing, burns, nerve damage and fractures had higher disability weight values than lacerations, avulsions and contusions. The three most common NEISS-AIP non-fatal injury types during 2015-2020 were poisoning, internal injuries of the head and face lacerations, with disability weights of 0.163 (0.109-0.227), 0.168 (0.112-0.232) and 0.018 (0.010-0.029), respectively.

Conclusions: Mapping of publicly available disability weights data to a prominent non-fatal injury surveillance source can improve opportunities to measure and communicate the health and economic impact of injuries and violence.