Health system and law enforcement synergies for injury surveillance, control and prevention: a scoping review

Abstract

Background: Healthcare providers and law enforcement (LE) officers are among the most common first responders to injuring events. Despite frequent interface between the health system (HS) and LE sectors, the published evidence that supports their collaboration in injury surveillance, control and prevention has not been comprehensively reviewed.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review of literature published from 1990 to 2016 that focused on local and regional HS and LE collaborations in injury surveillance, control and prevention. Our aim was to describe what is known and what remains unexplored about these cross-sector efforts.

Results: 128 articles were included in the final review. These were categorised by their focus on either surveillance activities or partnerships in injury control and prevention programmes. The majority of surveillance articles focused on road traffic injuries. Conversely, articles describing partnerships and programme evaluations primarily targeted the prevention of interpersonal violence.

Discussion: This review yielded two major findings: overall, the combination of HS and LE injury data added value to surveillance systems, especially as HS data augmented LE data; and HS and LE partnerships have been developed to improve injury control and prevention. However, there are few studies that have evaluated the impact and sustainability of these partnerships.

Conclusions: The current evidence to support HS and LE collaboration in injury surveillance and control and prevention programmes is heterogeneous. Notable gaps suggest ample opportunity for further research and programme evaluation across all types of injury.

Keywords: Health Services; Public Health; Safe Community; Surveillance; Violence.

Figure 1

Health system-law enforcement literature review.

Figure 2

Published health system-law enforcement collaboration articles by world region Note: Darker shading indicates a greater number of articles published. Some articles included data from more than one country and are counted multiple times. Countries represented include (in order of most published articles to least): US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Canada, France, New Zealand, China, Finland, Iran, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Bangladesh, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Mali, Mexico, Nicaragua, Portugal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Vietnam.

Figure 3

Total number of health system-law enforcement articles by mechanism of injury or partnership intent. Note: Substance abuse category includes partnerships that include substance abuse-involved unintentional or intentional injury (eg, alcohol-related MVCs). Multiple forms category includes both unintentional and intentional injuries.