Injury indicators quantify population-level health outcomes, such as Emergency Department (ED) visits, hospitalizations, or deaths, attributable to injury. The injury indicators can be used to assess the overall burden of various injuries and compare across different populations. Since injury indicators may overlap with one another, they are not mutually exclusive.

Statewide, centralized electronic vital statistics, hospital discharge, and ED data are used to calculate the indicators. It is important to keep in mind that the quality of the Injury Indicators is dependent on the completeness and accuracy of external cause-of-injury coding found within individual state and U.S. territory data sets.

The CDC National Centers for Injury Control and Prevention prepares a document outlining instructions for preparing state injury indicators. See latest, State Injury Indicators: Instructions for Preparing 2022 Data

These indicators are developed by the CSTE Injury Epidemiology and Surveillance Subcommittee to explore ICD-10-CM code groupings.