26/07/2001

The Victorian Injury Surveillance and Applied Research Function (VISAR) commenced an all age, all injury, emergency department surveillance system at the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) in 1990 and has since maintained, analysed, reported on, disseminated, applied and supplied injury data for the purpose of injury prevention. During this period, VISAR has been funded by VicHealth, which has been continued until the end of 2003. Over this period remarkable reductions in fatal injuries and significant reductions in some serious and moderately severe injuries have been observed. VISAR has progressively established substantial holdings of statewide injury data at three levels of severity, deaths, hospital admissions and emergency department presentations. Future data system innovations will focus on the development of a high quality sampling frame of detailed hospital injury data collections and development of an injury forecasting system. Hazard is the quarterly injury prevention publication produced by VISAR and is a popular and important vehicle for the widespread and timely dissemination of data and injury prevention information on important and emerging injury issues. The diverse range of topics covered by Hazard reflects a multi-strategic policy to opportunistically link with new or potential regulation or standards, meet client demands, provide background to research projects, and provide updates of previous topics. Hazard is distributed to a mailing list of 1,220 and all editions are available on the MUARC website. In addition to Hazard, the VISAR information service is an important form of data dissemination. The number of requests has risen annually to a high of 500 in 2000. Main topics for which data is regularly requested include: drowning, dog bites, injuries for specific local government areas, elderly falls and farm injury. Regular clients utilising the VISAR information service in 2000 were education, government, researchers, the media and industry/commerce. Local government has become a frequent client of VISAR with the supply of injury data to local government forming part of a broader VISAR support function for community based injury prevention. This integrates with MUARC’s role as a WHO Safe Communities Affiliate Support Centre. VISAR aims to continue to play a major and increasingly effective role in injury prevention. Further data and research collaboration is anticipated with hospital emergency departments, Health Care Networks and other partners.