Lessons learned through the 20-year development of a national fatal drowning database in Australia
Peden, Amy E., Willcox-Pidgeon, Stacey, Scarr, Justin-Paul, and Franklin, Richard C. (2023) Lessons learned through the 20-year development of a national fatal drowning database in Australia. BMC Public Health, 23. 1499.
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Abstract
Background: Co-ordinated, evidence-based policy and programmatic efforts are needed to respond to complex drowning prevention problems. Comprehensive, current, and robust data are vital for agenda setting, burden and risk factor identification, intervention design and evaluation, as well as setting policy. We aim to record methods used in, and identify impacts of, the development of a national fatal drowning database (NFDD) in Australia, including lessons learned across research, policy, and practice.
Methods: We employ a case study method using process mapping and document review to explore the evolution, drivers and impacts of the NFDD. We analyse methodological approaches including those relating to data definitions, drowning case collection, and management, as well as tracking the various outputs of the NFDD. We describe a development timeline that presents impact of drowning prevention policy, and research agendas on database development, and research investments more specifically.
Results: Our study identified that the collected variables grew 20-fold from 2002 to 2022, reaching 259 variables, and 5,692 unique cases of fatal drowning. The NFDD employs data triangulation methodology, combining keyword and targeted searches of coronial files, media report monitoring, and organisational data provision. Database development is influenced by the Australia Water Safety Strategy, policymaker and practitioner-initiated research agendas, and identification of knowledge gaps. We identified numerous outputs spanning publications, media, intervention development, and legislative submissions.
Conclusion: A comprehensive and robust NFDD informed by policymaker and practitioner input can enhance surveillance, policy, and intervention development for drowning prevention. Employing mixed data collection and validation methods can supplement weaknesses in official data sources. There is a need for the NFDD to continue to evolve in its application while maintaining rigorous case identification and data quality assurance processes. Despite significant investment, the outputs and influence on drowning prevention practice in Australia has been extremely valuable and contributed to sizeable reductions in Australia’s fatal drowning rate.
| Item ID: | 80301 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1471-2458 |
| Keywords: | Alcohol, Children, Death registry, Drowning, Epidemiology, Health policy, Leadership, Risk factor analysis, Water safety |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Funders: | Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) |
| Projects and Grants: | NHMRC APP2009306 |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Feb 2024 00:00 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420604 Injury prevention @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 20 HEALTH > 2004 Public health (excl. specific population health) > 200408 Injury prevention and control @ 100% |
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