What it means
The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) does more than count deaths. It combines death certificates, coroner or medical examiner records, and law-enforcement reports so public health and public safety leaders can see patterns and circumstances around suicides, homicides, legal intervention deaths, unintentional firearm injury deaths, and deaths of undetermined intent.
The 2023 report covers 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In the 50 states and the District of Columbia, it analyzed 70,133 fatal incidents involving 72,093 deaths; 62.4% of those deaths were suicides and 28.5% were homicides. Coverage was statewide in 47 states; California, Florida, and Texas had partial county coverage.
Use NVDRS to sharpen the questions a local prevention plan must answer: Who is most affected? What circumstances show up repeatedly? What must we measure to know whether conditions are changing? It can guide targeted prevention planning, but it does not tell you whether one program caused a change or whether a national pattern looks the same in every community.
Read the source accurately
What this source can—and cannot—tell you
What it establishes
CDC’s 2023 NVDRS surveillance report documents 70,133 fatal incidents involving 72,093 deaths in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with the distribution of manners of death, demographic patterns, methods of injury, reported circumstances, and coverage limits.
Where the evidence stops
This is surveillance, not a causal evaluation. It cannot explain why one community’s trend changed, measure nonfatal violence, or replace complete local data. Missing or uneven circumstance information must be considered.