Qualifying information on deaths and serious injuries caused by road traffic in five Brazilian capitals using record linkage

Police and hospital data linkage for traffic injury surveillance: A systematic review

This systematic review examines studies of traffic injury that involved linkage of police crash data and hospital data and were published from 1994 to 2023 worldwide in English. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were the basis for selecting papers from PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus, and for identifying additional relevant papers using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and supplementary snowballing (n = 60). The selected papers were reviewed in terms of research objectives, data items and sample size included, temporal and spatial coverage, linkage methods and software tools, as well as linkage rates and most significant findings. Many studies found that the number of clinically significant road injury cases was much higher according to hospital data than crash data. Under-estimation of cases in crash data differs by road user type, pedestrian cases commonly being highly under-counted. A limited number of the papers were from low- and middle-income countries. The papers reviewed lack consistency in what was reported and how, which limited comparability.

Assessing discrepancies in estimates of road traffic deaths in Brazil

INTRODUCTION

The First UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) ended with most low/middle-income countries (LMICs) failing to reduce road traffic deaths. In contrast, Brazil reported a strong decline starting in 2012. However, comparisons with global health statistical estimates suggest that official statistics from Brazil under-report traffic deaths and overestimate declines. Therefore, we sought to assess the quality of official reporting in Brazil and explain discrepancies.

METHODS

We obtained national death registration data and classified deaths to road traffic deaths and partially specified causes that could include traffic deaths. We adjusted data for completeness and reattributed partially specified causes proportionately over specified causes. We compared our estimates with reported statistics and estimates from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD)-2019 study and other sources.

RESULTS

We estimate that road traffic deaths in 2019 exceeded the official figure by 31%, similar to traffic insurance claims (27.5%) but less than GBD-2019 estimates (46%). We estimate that traffic deaths have declined by 25% since 2012, close to the decline estimated by official statistics (27%) but much more than estimated by GBD-2019 (10%). We show that GBD-2019 underestimates the extent of recent improvements because GBD models do not track the trends evident in the underlying data.

CONCLUSION

Brazil has made remarkable progress in reducing road traffic deaths in the last decade. A high-level evaluation of what has worked in Brazil could provide important guidance to other LMICs.

Analysis on the accident casualties influenced by several economic factors based on the traffic-related data in China from 2004 to 2016

PURPOSE

By studying the economic data related to road traffic accidents in recent 10 years, this paper explores the impact of various economic factors on the number of casualties in traffic accidents in China, and puts forward related prevention and management measures.

METHODS

Based on five economic factors including the number of new health institutions, health investment, transportation investment and disposable income per capita, this paper collects the data of traffic accidents in 31 provinces and municipalities of China from 2004 to 2016 and estimates the parameters using fixed effect model.

RESULTS

The number of health institutions, health investment, transportation investment and disposable income per capita are negatively correlated with the number of traffic accident casualties; the number of new health institutions is positively correlated with the number of traffic accident casualties; health investment and transportation investment have a great impact on the number of road traffic accident casualties.

CONCLUSION

Economic development has a positive impact on improving traffic conditions, but the increase in the number of new health institutions does not reduce the number of casualties in accidents. The irrational layout of health institutions and imperfect road traffic management mechanism should be taken into account.

Mortality, morbidity and health in developed societies: a review of data sources

The purpose of this paper is to review the major sources of data on mortality, morbidity and health in Europe and in other developed regions in order to examine their potential for analysing mortality and morbidity levels and trends. The review is primarily focused on routinely collected information covering a whole country. No attempt is made to draw up an inventory of sources by country; the paper deals instead with the pros and cons of each source for mortality and morbidity studies in demography. While each source considered separately can already yield useful, though partial, results, record linkage among data sources can significantly improve the analysis. Record linkage can also lead to the detection of possible causal associations that could eventually be confirmed. More generally, Big Data can reveal changing mortality and morbidity trends and patterns that could lead to preventive measures being taken rather than more costly curative ones.