Skip to main content

Injury Surveillance Program

The Injury Surveillance Program gathers, analyzes, and interprets data on injuries in Massachusetts. This data is used to monitor injury trends, identify populations that are most impacted, guide programs and policy development.

More than 5,600 Massachusetts residents died because of injury in 2022. Over 500,000 injuries are treated in a Massachusetts hospital or emergency department every year.

Injuries are bodily harm – fatal or nonfatal - that can be caused by fires, motor vehicle crashes, drowning, sharp objects, firearms, being struck by an object, tripping and falling, pedestrian and bicyclist injuries, and more. Injuries can be unintentional (sometimes called “accidental”) or intentional, such as suicide and self-harm or homicide and assault related.

The good news is that most injuries are preventable! Injuries often occur in predictable patterns with recognizable risk factors and can be prevented using evidence-based policies and strategies.

Injury Data Spotlight

Between 2010 and 2022, the number and rate of fall injury deaths among Massachusetts adults aged 65 and older increased sharply.

  • Age-adjusted unintentional fall death rates among MA residents ages 65+ years increased 119%, from 43.2 per 100,000 older adults in 2010 to 94.7 per 100,000 older adults in 2022.
  • Increases during this time were experienced across demographic groups including age subgroups, race & ethnicity, sex, and rural & non-rural residents​.
  • In 2022, there were a total of 1,118 unintentional fall-related deaths among MA adults ages 65+ compared with 434 in 2010. Four out of ten (42%) of these deaths were associated with a traumatic brain injury. In fact, the leading cause of both fatal and nonfatal traumatic brain injuries in Massachusetts is a fall.
  • Falls and fall injuries are largely preventable! Please see Preventing Older Adult Falls for ways to prevent falls. 

Injury Surveillance Systems

We provide data from these systems and other data sources such as hospital and emergency department visits, health surveys, and vital records (death and birth data) to injury prevention professionals and partners, researchers, and the public.

MA Violent Death Reporting System  State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System  Weapon Related Injury Surveillance System  MA Crash-Related Injury Surveillance System (MA CRISS) 

What you need to know

Massachusetts injury facts & highlights  Annual statewide injury reports  Suicide data & reports  Transportation injury data  Statewide homicide data  Data briefs on traumatic brain injuries & sports-related concussions  Drug overdose and poisonings data 

Contact Information

Address

Massachusetts Department of Public Health
Bureau of Community Health and Prevention, 250 Washington Street, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02108
Directions 

Online

Email Injury Surveillance Program at mdph-isp@mass.gov

Image credits:  Shutterstock

Help Us Improve Mass.gov  with your feedback

Please do not include personal or contact information.
Feedback